


Connie Swap Episode 27: Be Wherever You Aren't

by br42, BurdenKing, MjStudioArts



Series: Connie Swap [27]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Anxiety, Art, Deaf, Deaf Character, Drama, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Momswap, Pictures, Platonic Romance, Slice of Life, Steven Universe AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-14 05:38:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16034093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/br42/pseuds/br42, https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurdenKing/pseuds/BurdenKing, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MjStudioArts/pseuds/MjStudioArts
Summary: Home is stressful right now and there's precious little to do in town since the power is still out, so it seems like a really good time to be somewhere else... Like, say, a remote, paradisiacal island with Steven! And Sadie! And... Lars?!





	1. Double-Edged Sword

Patterns. Scintillating. Fascinating but, at the same time, frustrating. Connie furrowed her brows and tossed in her sleep. The light sheet she'd been using for a blanket had been kicked off during the night and there was still sweat decorating her brow, dampening her pajamas.

Connie awoke frowning.

It was hot. Why was it so hot? Connie sat up and blearily rubbed the grit from her eyes. She looked at her digital alarm clock and found it blank. Her frown deepened as her brain trudged through a morass of dream fluff.

Oh right. The spaceship launch had knocked out the power. No power, no air conditioning. No AC in August meant sweltering, humid nights, the front door propped open for even modest relief.

On autopilot Connie reached for her hearing aids but found only one. Then she looked around in vain for her power sink. More dream fluff dissolved. Being at ground zero for the launch meant her phone had been bricked and one of her gemtech-hardened hearing aids had failed. The power sink was in pieces but she suspected it had broken for other reasons.

Peridot could probably fix or replace both of the gemtech devices but her green guardian had slunk off to her room following the clash outside the barn and hadn't emerged: not that evening, not yesterday. A glance around confirmed that today wasn't looking any better: Jasper was sitting at her customary spot on the couch reading, but the Beach House was otherwise empty.

Feeling sticky waking up sweaty, Connie gathered her clothes for the day and headed for the bathroom, offering Jasper a perfunctory nod as she went. She could feel her hair, frizzy despite the sweat, wafting in a static-induced cloud. Every so often she'd hear through her one hearing aid a crackle as an errant spark leapt between strands of dark hair.

The one thing Connie could take solace in was that, despite the power being out, she wouldn't have to take a cold shower. Peridot's 'command center' built in the bathroom wall gave off enough waste heat to ensure warm showers regardless. Not that she wanted an especially hot one on a morning like this. Reaching up and touching the shower head, Connie slowly discharged as much electricity as she could into the grounded metal plumbing.

Making sure to not shower while electrically charged was the sort of lesson you only had to learn once.

* * *

Connie lifted the carton of milk from the room temperature fridge, unscrewed the cap, and sniffed. _Seems a little iffy. Better have toast instead._

This next part was going to be tricky but Connie was skeptical enough of that milk to try it. Absently running a hand through her frizzy hair first, Connie put two pieces of bread into the toaster. Then she pulled the power cable out of the unpowered outlet, and touched the left 'neutral' plug to the faucet. With that electrically grounded, she then gripped the right 'hot' plug with her free hand and channeled some electricity into it.

The coils inside the toaster glowed.

Connie took deep, even breaths, trying to keep her feelings (and thus, the voltage) steady.

Wolf padded in from outside, tracking in sand as he did. He entered the kitchen and snuffled about, typical Wolf behavior when someone was preparing food. Finding no dropped morsels and receiving no headscatches --Connie was concentrating and her hands were full-- he gave Connie a friendly nudge with his noggin and then padded back out.

The coils wavered a little in brightness but the bread appeared to be toasting just fine.

The warp pad chimed. "Hey party people!" called Lapis. Bark. "And party animals," she corrected. "Did a few flyovers, bugged some people at NORAD, and there's no sign of falling space junk."

Connie looked up, turning her head slightly so that her working hearing aid was angled towards the gem. "So they really did make it?"

Lapis shrugged as she walked toward the kitchen divider. "Maybe." She leaned over, elbows on the counter and her face resting on her palms. "It means they didn't explode in our neck of the solar system. But there's a lot of space in space so..." and she trailed off.

Jasper grunted. Lapis and Connie turned her way.

"Thinkin' something, OJ?" asked the svelte gem.

Jasper neatly slid a large finger into place and set the book down in her lap before speaking. "It'd be simpler if the ship had failed."

"You want Pearl and Amethyst to have blown up?!" cried Connie, voice sharp.

Jasper gave a small head tilt implying a negation. "Don't want them shattered. But if the ship failed, if they fell back to Earth or never left, it'd be simpler." She nodded in the direction of the temple door, one room of which was locked and containing the missing Crystal Gem.

Connie's eyes narrowed. "It wasn't about convenience." 

"Hey, uh, Con-con?"

Connie ignored Lapis and continued speaking. "Them marching up to the door and asking to be bubbled would have been convenient, but that wouldn't make it right!"

"Yo, girlie."

Jasper shook her head, mane swaying slightly. "Not saying right or wrong. But all of this? Complicated." With that she went back to her book.

Connie was gritting her teeth when a small splash of water hit her in the face. "Connie!"

"Gah! What?!" she snapped.

Lapis' expression was dry. She pointed downward. "Your toast is done."

Bathed in the radiance of white-hot coils, the toast was blackened, smoking, and very possibly on fire. A wordless cry of frustration echoed through Connie's head. Her hair sparked and the coils grew brighter still before something inside the device shorted out with a sudden 'pop!' and a smell of burnt circuitry. The toaster-turned-toaster-oven began to cool.

A bulb overhead flickered on, grew bright, and then went out as the tungsten filament inside burned in half.

Standing at the center of an invisible energy storm, Connie shook her head, willing herself back from the fanned flames of her frustration. She needed to do something or she'd steadily burn out the surviving electronics in the Beach House... and maybe start an electrical fire.

Her power sink wasn't an option, but she'd found a replacement of a sorts.

Connie took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Pearl and Amethyst were huddled fearfully behind her. Jasper was advancing, per Peridot's orders. Lapis' water hand loomed overhead. _Why won't anyone listen to me?! Why is everyone else. So. Wrong?!_

She opened her eyes and was holding her sword, the weapon crackling with energy and the promise of wrongs to be made right. It was beautiful, flawless, the most solid thing in her world at that moment. She didn't know if she would have to relive the fight at the barn each time she summoned her sword, of if that was just a crutch for now while she was still learning.

It left her feeling a little angry each time, though.

Whatever the case, she could funnel her electrical energy into her sword, the blade acting as a kind of battery for it, which would spare the Beach House electronics from further abuse.

She tore her eyes from the weapon in her hand and saw Lapis flinch. Jasper stared for a second longer before turning back to her reading and Connie couldn't help but notice she was clenching the book with her fists.

Connie had summoned her sword twice yesterday and Lapis and Jasper had reacted similarly each time. And like Peridot still locked in her room, it didn't look like today would be any different.

Transferring her sword to her left hand, Connie made herself a bowl of cereal and sat down at one of the bar stools. After two bites Connie stared dismayed down at the cereal floating in lukewarm milk of questionable freshness. A glance at the still-smoking toaster, though, was enough for her to resume eating.

Electricity danced up and down the length of her blade.

* * *

Connie used a trio of fields to clamber up onto the roof of the Beach House. She'd snuck up there once or twice in the past, but eventually Peridot had noticed, flown up there, and tractor beamed her down (back when she'd had limb enhancers capable of doing both concurrently). She'd then given Connie a lengthy and _emphatic_ lecture against her climbing up again.

Peridot wasn't likely to lecture her now and, well, Connie kinda wanted to be out of the house just then. She'd prepared an excuse in case the others asked but Jasper had gone back to her reading and Lapis had retreated to her room.

The breeze up top was nice and the direct sunlight wasn't too bad when she had a force field for shade. It was early enough that the shingles hadn't gotten too hot quite yet. She tried to focus on just the field shading her and after a couple of minutes she managed to 'forget' about the other three fields long enough for them to vanish on their own. She breathed a sigh of relief as thinking became easier, then transferred her sword from one hand to the other and stared into the distance, hoping to see a brown-haired figure walking or biking towards her.

Was Steven in school today? Were the schools even open with power still out across the greater Beach City area? With her cell phone dead and the house phone fried, the distance between the Beach House and the Universe family home felt a lot larger.

Connie was just about to climb down and start trekking across town when the distant sound of an alert wafted up from the house below. Scooching over to the edge of the roof overlooking the patio, she saw Jasper looking around, presumably for her.

Jasper looked up. Connie waved.

"Give me a boost?" the Quartz asked. Jasper could easily have jumped up to the roof so Connie assumed she was trying not to damage it in the process. Connie further assumed there had been a number of similarly emphatic lectures directed Jasper's way some time in the past.

Apparently the roof was a lecture magnet.

Hopping up to the field Connie put nearby, Jasper said, "Corrupted gem spotted." Her eyes lingered on the sword for a beat before she asked, "Coming?"

Was she? It wasn't that she had no opinion, it was that she had two strong opinions that were tugging her in different directions. On the one hand, of course she wanted to go on a mission! She was a Crystal Gem and Crystal Gems went on missions to stop monsters and make the world a better place. On the other hand, sometimes the Crystal Gems were wrong; some missions involved going to stop two refugees and make their world a terrible place.

Half of Connie wanted to march toward the warp pad, head and sword held high. Half of Connie wanted to trek across town to her friend’s house, getting out of this emotional quagmire as soon as possible.

Connie took one last look in the direction of town. No Steven. A deep breath later, she made the call, turning to Jasper with a half smile. "Yeah. Let's go on a mission."

Jasper helped her to her feet, held her gently but firmly against her side, and leapt down to the patio below. The whole deck shuddered with the impact but Jasper flexed her legs like shock absorbers as she landed so Connie hardly felt the jolt.

Speaking of, a few errant sparks arced from sword to Quartz but the warrior seemed unphased. "Sorry about that," apologized Connie. She should probably have fired off a lightning bolt or something to discharge the weapon before getting helped down.

Jasper shrugged and the two walked inside, the gem silencing the alert and then leaving to get Lapis. Connie gathered up her mission gear... absent her usual saber because, _sword._

"You want to come, Wolf?" she invited the supine lupine sprawled across the couch. The hound raised one sleepy eyelid, snorted, then went back to sleep, his position made clear.

A little later Jasper emerged dripping wet from Lapis' room in the temple. Lapis followed after, completely dry and looking awfully pleased with herself. She skipped over to grab a canteen of water ("Locked-") and clip the metal cylinder that was her hammer ("-and loaded!") to her shorts.

They stepped onto the warp pad and Jasper just so happened to whip her head around, a wet mane of hair slopping into the blue gem's face as the beam of light surrounded them.

* * *

When the beam vanished at the destination pad, all three of them had little curls of steam rising off them and everyone's hair had frizzed out to wild proportions.

Not engaging in wet horseplay while electrically charged was the sort of lesson you only had to learn once.

It was late afternoon where they'd arrived and the weather was cold. _It's winter in the southern hemisphere so..._ Connie tried to use the position of the sun overhead to estimate her longitude. _Southern Africa maybe?_ They were standing on a plain or savanna, the trees sparse, so she might have been right.

Connie spent a minute fishing cold weather clothes out of her pack and slipping them on as additional layers to her Beach City summer attire. Doing it while passing her sword from hand-to-hand was tricky, but it was that or start randomly zapping those around her. Plus, summoning her sword got more and more difficult the more times she did it in a day, so hanging on to the existing one made sense.

Jasper had set off almost the moment they'd arrived, long strides eating up the distance. By the time Connie was dressed for the climate, the Quartz was a small, distant figure across the savanna.

"Want a lift, girlie?" asked Lapis, one hand held out in invitation.

"Sure, just a moment." Connie pointed her sword skyward, willed the energy out of the blade, and a long arc of electricity shot out, not quite thunderclap loud but hardly subtle. "Okay. I probably won't zap you while we go."

Lapis' gaze lingered on the patch of sky where the pseudo-lightning strike had arced. "Man, that's some serious juice. Guess the sword gives you more oomph than doing it by hand."

Steven had been _AMAZED_ by Connie's sword and had practically been running in circles in excitement to help her think of tests to figure it out. The two conducted an ad hoc power testing yesterday since Peridot was... unavailable. Near as they could tell, the sword helped Connie store more energy and better aim it, but didn't actually allow her to charge any faster.

No, all of this was the result of Connie's current, conflicted mood, though she chose not to say as much. Lapis pulled her into a bridal carry and took flight.

"Careful with that pocket knife," quipped the gem as Connie settled into a good position. "You know, it's probably a good thing Dot's taking a break. You remember how nuts she went studying your shapeshifting ability?"

Connie nodded. It had been a long two days of scanning, prodding, and cat puns.

"Well, I think the only thing Peri's more obsessed over than shapeshifting is figuring out gem weapons," said Lapis. "Your little deus excalibur move at the barn is going to earn you a really long weekend one of these days." Lapis flashed Connie a smile that looked mostly sincere, but Connie was too thoughtful to return it.

They flew in silence for a few wingbeats. Then Connie asked, "Why is she being like this? And why was she so-" _wrong_ "-determined to stop the others?"

Lapis flew in a lazy circle so as not to outpace Jasper below... or to stall for time. "I'd say something about it being too early in the morning for something this heavy, but we had to go and warp to the other side of the planet," she said, her joke thin.

She winged another circle considering her words. "The thing to remember is that back when Dot was still getting the hang of all this Crystal Gem business, she had the bright idea that she could ring up Yellow Diamond and set the record straight. She was gonna convince her boss to use the Earth carefully, not riddle it full of Kindergartens, and then organics and gemkind could hold hands and sing."

Connie looked up skeptically at the gem, careful to keep her sword pointed away.

Lapis shook her head. "Yeah, doesn't make a lot of sense to me either, but anyway, your mama stopped ET before she could phone home. And later Peri felt really embarrassed about the whole thing. Like, 'sorry I used the doomsday button for a pillow' sorry. I think Yellow Diamond would have laughed in her face and then remote detonated the communicator, but Dot never really came 'round. And those two getting away, well..." Lapis trailed off.

Connie frowned, brows furrowed. Her sword, meanwhile, sparked and shimmered. "But she was wrong. With Amethyst and Pearl, I mean.” She looked up plaintively at Lapis. “Right?”

Lapis surveyed the area below, taking the time to swoop over and freak out a vulture gliding by. She sighed and then, keeping her eyes on her surroundings instead of looking at Connie, she said, "I get wanting to go back home. Totally. Spent a long weekend in Homeworld space one time and came back with Peridot, after all. But I knew better than to stick around or make a fuss. They'd have been better hanging around here, honestly. Much as it pains me to say it, I'm with Jasper on this one."

She managed to flash Connie a half-smile. "But don't worry about Dot. She'll have her sulk and then be out soon enough, nagging and bragging like usual."

Connie managed to hide her glower from Lapis by looking down at the ground and finding an innocuous spot to shoot an arc of electricity.

Lapis landed a moment later, setting Connie down, eyebrows raised. "Whoa. Good thing you're not a dude or the jokes would write themselves."

Connie glanced at Lapis quizzically then decided she was probably better off not knowing. Plus, she didn't trust herself to speak just then. Fortunately, Jasper caught up, ending the conversation though the sheer level of mission-related focus that radiated off of her.

"We're close. Lapis, Connie, with me." She gave Connie's sword a glance and added, "Quietly."

The three advanced slowly, a dozen nature documentaries of lionesses stalking across the Serengeti flitting across Connie's mind as they went. Needless to say, by the time they got to their destination, Connie's sword was _thrumming_ with energy.

There was a sensor tower a little ways off, though this one shaped more like a spindle than a pyramid. If the monster that had attacked Connie and Steven at the docks was worm-like, the one coiled around the tower was a giant serpent. Huge, lemon-colored, and scaly.

"Huh. Been a while since we saw a Triphane," said Lapis quietly.

There was the creak of distressed metal from the tower as the yellow coils of the creature contracted, constricting further. The gemstone was located near the tip of the monster's tail, a rectangular stone that glittered in the chill winter day. If Connie's stone was the vibrant yellow-orange of mango lassi, this one's stone was the wan yellow of watered-down lemonade.

"Water?"

Connie, briefly confused, turned to see Jasper addressing Lapis.

"Nearest watering hole is-" The blue gem's eyes went unfocused for a second before she pointed off in the distance. "-Twenty or so miles thataway. It's not a lot though. This is dry country; I'm pretty sure the Kalahari desert is nearby, or as I call it, 'no-fun-for-Lapis land.' You two could wait while I go water shopping, maybe keep it busy so the tower doesn't get too-"

There was a streak of light and a thunderclap. Lapis and Jasper whipped around, gawking and falling into a defensive stance, respectively. And what they saw was the sensor tower rocking gently back and forth like a nudged bowling pin as a giant cloud of yellow smoke dissipated.

A lemon-yellow gemstone sat twinkling in the grass.

"Or I could, uh, do that," offered Connie, waving the hand that, until a moment ago, had been holding her sword.

"Yeah, that works too," stammered Lapis. "Huh, good thing you didn't start tossing that around at the barn."

Jasper's and Connie's expressions darkened, the latter already tromping toward the structure.

For a few minutes no one spoke. Connie bubbled the Triphane and sent it back to the temple, another splash of yellow in a sea of greens, oranges, and blues. Jasper and Lapis circled the obviously-damaged sensor tower, fragments of gemtech littering the soil where they'd been worn free.

"You know how to fix it?" asked the Quartz.

Lapis shook her head. "Unless the radiator is out of water... no."

The two looked at Connie.

"Me?" asked the girl. "I can't even read the Gem language, let alone fix gemtech. And I doubt it needs to be shot with electricity or anything." A cold wind blew past and the girl put her hands in her pockets. Her hair was already beginning to frizz up and sway in the breeze.

"Contact Bismuth?" offered Jasper.

"Oh yeah!" exclaimed Lapis before pausing and shaking her head. "No, wait, P-pod's the one with the communicator. Shoot, if only she didn't patch all those old holes between rooms, I could slip in and snag it. ‘It keeps out unwanted pests,’" said Lapis in a nasally Peridot impression. “Yeah, but it also keeps out- Oh, man, that one slipped right by me. Good job, Peri,” murmured the blue gem.

The three of them stood staring at each other while the structure had a dozen red lights of distress flickering across it.

"Mission over, I guess," mumbled Connie, her voice flat.


	2. Universal Improvement

Steven coughed and had to take a moment and sip a drink before he'd gotten the fry bits back on the right track. “Ehem.” He cleared his throat, took one more sip of water, and then exclaimed, "Wow! You poofed a giant worm gem person all by yourself?! Also, I’m glad gems don’t work like video games, otherwise a yellow snake would be immune to lightning."

Connie sat beside him in the sand, positioned so her good ear was pointed his way, and carefully finished chewing and swallowing her own bite so as to avoid the same fate. "Yeah." She smiled and her cheeks flushed slightly, both common side effects for her being the subject of Steven's awe/praise. A beat later, though, a frown managed to muscle its way to the surface. "It should have been really cool but mainly I was just glad the mission was over faster."

Steven offered Connie a swig of his drink then, after a polite shake of her head, turned and put it back in his pack. Both of them had their adventure gear near them because this was Beach City and monsters happen. Connie even had her sword resting in the sand beside her, one hand draped across the grip to maintain contact... though that was more so she wasn't a walking electrical hazard than anything else.

Gear stowed, Steven turned back to his friend, his expression somber. "Oh, was something wrong?" He studied Connie's face a moment longer and said, "Things still awkward after the launch?"

"SO AWKWARD!" cried Connie, the words bursting out, and she gestured broadly with her free hand to emphasize the point. "And frustrating! Things are broken at home, Peridot's still locked in her room, and no one can go five minutes without bringing up Amethyst, Pearl, the launch, or my sword, and every time they do I just want to shout at them!"

She slumped backwards into the sand with a loud 'Ugh!' then reached over and blindly snatched up a handful of fry bits, eating them with a scowl as she stared up at the force field sun shade overhead.

The power may be out but the fry shop was still open and had gas fryers for situations just like this. So long as you didn't try to pay by credit card --or provoke Ronaldo, who was on a hair trigger due to severe Internet withdrawal-- you could still enjoy salty starchy goodness.

Swallowing, Connie lifted the sword up a little, angling it this way and that as she stared at the blade. "I had all these ideas about how great it was going to be when I finally summoned my sword. Practically every day I would fantasize about how cool it'd be and how proud everyone would feel. But now I can't help but think about how wrong the gems were or how frustrated I am with them. Literally! I actually have to think about that to summon my sword." She let the arm holding the weapon drop to the sand, the hard light extension of her will landing with a thud.

Steven scooched into view, looking down at his friend with a compassionate expression. "Well, I think it's really cool. Really _really_ cool. And-" he flushed a little and he felt the need to study the sand by Connie’s head instead. "-I'm proud of you. It must have been really hard to stand up to Peridot, Lapis, and Jasper like that. As soon as Mom uses my full name on me, I'm looking for somewhere to hide," he cracked, earning a chuckle from Connie. He managed to meet her eyes again. "But I'm glad you helped Pearl and Amethyst go home."

The knot in Connie’s chest loosened slightly, her breathing a little easier. She used her elbows to prop herself up. "Really? Because I _feel_ like it was the right thing-" she said, emphasizing the word 'feel' as she tapped over her heart. A moment later she moved her hand and tapped her gemstone as well. "But up here, I'm worried," and her hand went to her temple.

She searched Steven's face, suddenly desperate for reassurance.

His eyes were sad on her behalf but his smile was pure. He scooched closer and pulled her into a hug, Connie leaning into it even as she was careful with the positioning of her sword. She inhaled deeply, the floral scent of his shampoo a source of olfactory comfort. Through the nest of his hair she caught a glimpse of red: one of the scrunchies she'd gotten him for his birthday. 

Near as she could tell, he'd worn one every day since turning fifteen.

This was nice. Connie felt her shoulders relax and there was an odd fluttering feeling in her stomach. The change in lighting meant her force field had probably vanished, but right then she didn't care. She hugged him back even harder with her free hand, wallowing in this single, uncomplicated moment.

"Thank you," she whispered. If he said something, she didn't hear it, her good ear pointed the wrong direction, but that was okay.

The fluttery feeling seemed to have moved to her legs. And grown stronger. She blinked, confused. Both of them pulled back from the hug, if a touch reluctantly, and wore similar expressions. A beat later she realized she actually felt a tremble in the ground beneath her, her eyes going wide in tandem with Steven's.

“What’s that?!” they cried in unison.

Looking around, everything seemed normal enough. Then Steven noticed something and pointed it out to Connie: Jamie, a mailman and local thespian, running full tilt across the beach while a hump of sand pursued. When the mail carrier reached the boardwalk, the ‘wave’ caused by the burrowing creature became a steady loud thudding sound --like someone running a stick across fence slats, only amplified-- and many of the boards in the boardwalk were jarred out of place or broken entirely.

Jamie dropped his mail satchel and briefly turned to try and retrieve it, only to see the subterranean wave hot on his heels and sprinting ahead even faster than before. With a shockingly loud sound of exploding timber, there was a spray of dirt, sand, and wood fragments as-

“A Ompa- A Omfachi- A mole gem?!” exclaimed Steven, his voice growing shrill from both surprise and trepidation.

The mole monster set about thrashing the mail satchel with machete-length claws and sharp teeth. Jamie, meanwhile, reached the lone shade tree in the vast open area between Funland Arcade and the fry shop, leapt, and shimmied up into the topmost part of the branches with surprising speed.

While the monster was turning people’s letters into confetti, Connie turned to tell Steven to get his combat gear... and found he’d already strapped the buckler to his arm and fitted the scouter over his left ear and eye. Connie willed a force field onto the shield and the two ran toward the foe.

Connie was considering throwing her sword at the enemy like she had the Triphane but then the gem beast ducked back beneath the ground, a final spray of shredded mail billowing out of the burrow. Aside from being a smaller and more evasive target, Connie realized that she hadn’t brought her usual saber because, _sword._ That meant that if she failed to take it out with the throw, she’d be unarmed. The odds of her being able to resummon her sword twice in succession during a frantic combat weren’t ones she felt confident in. _Better hang onto this,_ she thought, her grip tightening around the crackling weapon.

“Steven, warn the other residents to clear out. I’ll draw it to us and then we’ll try a block and shock.”

Steven nodded and tapped the side of his scouter, the bit of gemtech-as-birthday-present able to broadcast and receive speech like a line-of-sight walkie talkie even when the other person didn’t have one. Too bad it didn’t work outside of Connie’s energy aura or they could probably find a way to use it as a replacement for their phones being busted.

“Peedee! Close the fry shop! There’s a monster! Suitcase Sam, you need to get out of here. Miss Miller! There’s a- Huh? No, I’m pretty sure the mail’s gone, but if there are any letters that survive I’ll make sure you get them. Anyway, you need to get clear while Connie and I stop this thing!”

Connie jumped from the sand onto the edge of the boardwalk, stomping her feet and generally trying to be as conspicuous as possible to the dirt-dwelling denizen. Her attempts were seemingly successful because a half-second later there was the ‘thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud’ of the beast burrowing their way beneath the boardwalk. Steven and she tensed, ready to jump to the side if it tried to erupt up from underneath them, but instead it chose a softer exit, burrowing out just beyond the boardwalk and emerging with a spray of sand.

Steven had widened the field and used it to shelter him and Connie from the debris. When the monster lashed out at them with a paw ending in a trio of wicked-looking claws, he angled the shield back and to the side so the blow was deflected upward. This left the mole monster open for Connie’s counter attack. Then Steven switched off his shield’s inertial dampener, swung sideways, and Connie lunged forward raking the Omphacite across its face and other paw. She sent a surge of electricity through the blade as she sliced for good measure. Finally, Connie popped back as Steven advanced a half step and swung the shield back in place (dampener reengaged), doing a flawless job saving them from the monster’s retaliatory thrashing.

The block and shock, perfectly executed. Connie beamed with pride even as she kept her attention focused on their foe.

The green gem monster flailed, shaking its head back and forth from the cut it’d received. It was hurt, confused, and very, very angry. Rather than disappear back down its burrow like Connie had expected, though, the beast reared back and pounded the ground with its paws and roared.

Connie had been completely deaf the time a gem monster like this had attacked Steven and her while picnicking. So this was her first time to hear what was one of the loudest roars of her life. It didn’t top the Ruby fusion inside the tunnel, and Malachite had been louder at times, but when you considered the decibels created relative to its size, the green mole monster had them all beaten.

No wonder Steven, then new to hearing without assistance, had been so staggered by it. Even with only one good ear, the wall of noise shattered Connie’s thoughts and made her fall back a step.

With a final angry swat, the mole monster plunged back into the burrow and began to circle around the pair. Connie shook her head once, then twice trying to clear the ringing from her ear. Steven tapped the side of his scouter and, in a voice that sounded like it was coming from right in front of Connie instead of beside her, said, “I just learned this scouter does some noise cancelling, so I’m only mole-blasted in one ear. I’ll have to tell Miss Peridot how awesome her birthday present is after she comes out of her room.”

The two of them rotated in formation to keep the mole in front of them. Connie felt the impression of an idea forming, something they could do to combat their opponent, but all of that went to the wayside when the gem monster charged them, intent on attacking them from below.

Steven lunged right and swiftly swiveled around to bring his shield to bear. This helped protect him from the flying board fragments and sand. Connie, meanwhile, rolled left, summoning a force field to stay similarly shielded. The field wasn’t mobile, couldn’t be adjusted in size, and would be a lodestone in Connie’s thoughts until it dissolved. It was pretty much worse in every way to being protected by Steven, but it was certainly better than getting caught unshielded in that assault.

Connie strode around the monster counterclockwise, always rotating to keep it in front of her. Steven moved around it clockwise, his shield ever between him and it. They’d practiced regrouping this way so that they could do so quickly and efficiently. Shoulder-to-shoulder once more, Connie couldn’t help but feel her grin returning…

...At least until the Omphacite reared back to bellow a second time. Connie was quick to switch off her hearing aid. Steven jammed a finger in his unprotected ear. The air vibrated with the roar for several long seconds and then the mole monster disappeared back down its hole.

Not staggered this time, Connie had managed to piece back together her wits and think tactically. Switching her hearing aid back on, she said, “Steven. I have an idea. We’re going to draw it to us again and then I’m going to use a force field to run over the top of it and attack it from behind. I’m pretty sure this thing can’t really sense us unless we’re causing vibrations through the ground, so it shouldn’t know where I am until too late.”

Steven nodded, the motion conveyed through their proximity, shoulder rubbing against shoulder. “I’ll try and be extra noisy so it doesn’t know you’re gone.”

Connie ran in the direction of where the mole monster had originally burst through the boardwalk to trash Jamie’s satchel, Steven never more than a step behind her. As she’d hoped, the mole monster burrowed past them, intent on using the existing hole to attack from instead of needing to burst through the boards anew. Kicking off of Steven’s shield --and Steven pushing the barrier forward to give her a little extra boost as she did-- Connie willed a force field into being that was horizontal but angled upward. As she scrambled up the smooth surface of the force field like a kid frantically climbing a slide on the playground, Steven stomped and shuffled and shouted.

The Omphacite emerged and slashed at Steven, raking its six talons across the shield in a flurry of blows. Connie managed to reach the top of the field and leapt off into space, pivoting around as she reached the apex of her jump. Once she started coming down she reversed her grip on her sword so it was pointed below and held it tightly with both hands. Arms tensed, she thrust downward just before impact: the drop, her weight, and that little extra force of the thrust were all behind the sword that plunged into where the monster’s right shoulder met its neck.

Connie had tried to get her feet under her and knees flexed to brace for the impact but hadn’t quite gotten them positioned right. Instead, they slipped out from beneath her as she landed. That her sword sunk even deeper into the Omphacite than she’d expected, sinking all the way to the hilt, further threw her off balance. However, even as she landed awkwardly and had some of the wind knocked out of her, Connie had enough killer instinct to discharge the full electrical fury of her weapon as it plunged down.

To quote Steven afterwards, “That looked like something out of a video game cutscene mixed with an album cover by some band with umlauts in their name!”

There was a flash of yellow, an explosion of green smoke, and a clunk as the gemstone landed on the boardwalk and rolled to a stop a couple of feet away. Then there was another kind of roar, this one from Steven cheering as he sprinted around the hole and hauled Connie to her feet. She was dazed from an attack that had been equal parts ‘death from above’ and belly flop so she was unable to really follow the stream of praise and enthusiasm coming from her friend, but that didn’t stop her victorious smile.

After she had bubbled and banished the gemstone to the temple, Connie joined in on the excitement, the two doing an impromptu victory jig on the boardwalk.

* * *

With the car wash effectively closed from the power outage --"Not much people can do there that they can't do with their own garden hose."-- Steven's dad was making repeated trips out to the barn to see the state of things and haul some new belongings out there. As such, he was willing to give Connie and Steven a lift out to the quarry as he went, the two still grinning and riding out the thrill of their earlier victory.

On the sly, Connie had asked Steven if he'd gotten in trouble about the whole spaceship thing. He said in reply that his mom and dad had chalked it up to Beach City weirdness and not questioned him about why the family barn had been used as a launch pad; he'd elected not to inform them, a move Connie fully approved of.

When Connie asked Mr. Universe how he felt about it --the girl ready to add a new sprinkle of guilt to the soup of emotions surrounding the whole launch debacle-- he had replied fairly breezily that it wasn't really that big of a deal. All the irreplaceable photos and heirlooms were kept in storage less likely to get nested in by a family of raccoons, the stuff taken to build the spaceship 'had mostly been junk I probably didn't need in the first place,' and the barn had been cleaned top to bottom and organized better than it had been before.

Mr. Universe considered the whole thing a push.

"Cousin Andy will probably be a bit upset about the plane getting taken apart, but between the insurance check and the fact that it's part of a spaceship going across the stars, he'll come around," assured Steven's dad. "Better flying to Neptune than rusting in an old barn."

Mr. Universe, the seemingly non-materialist pack rat, had the weirdest relationship with stuff, one Connie still couldn't quite wrap her head around.

Steven and she grew quieter as they hiked down to the quarry floor. Between the summer heat and the negative energy pollution, it was sweltering. They weren’t there for more than a minute before the Nightmare Monster appeared and sprinted over in its curious stuttering way. In the month since she'd last been there, the Nightmare Monster had grown to about Jasper's height, although the weird body type and weirder form of movement made it hard to judge for sure. Like last time, it was very active, even playful.

She and Steven played a game of fetch with the shadowy enigma. Doing that thing where you pretend to throw the stick but don't was even more amusing when the one fetching moved via the eldritch-equivalent of stop motion animation. A profusion of eyes were wide with excitement as it flickered near and far, crossing the quarry swiftly.

Eventually Steven was too overcome to continue the game, and that was Connie's cue to put away the stick and bring the monster's head up to her own.

Confusion. Anger. Depression. Confusion. Fear. Confusion. Sadness. Panic. So much confusion. All of it coursing through her on route to her gemstone, a black, flame-like nimbus surrounding the stone as it stored or neutralized or did whatever it did with the absorbed negative energy.

She rode it out, one hand at the stone in her chest, gritting her teeth but finding it easier to bear than previous attempts. She hardly even teared up this time.

As had ever been the case, Connie retrieved the sleeping, infant-like shadow creature and carried it over to the scree-shielded fissure in the quarry wall. It wriggled in and disappeared, invisible in the gloom.

Turning back, Connie walked over to a softly sobbing Steven, guiding his forehead gently to her own. They were briefly bathed in the radiance of Connie's gemstone and then her friend wiped his nose and smiled at her, eyes bright.

Nervousness. Fear. A sense of feeling close to something so important it was scary, like you were on the verge of the best or worst day of your life and you had no idea which.

Steven passed her a tissue and guided her up out of the quarry, Connie feeling a little better with each step. She summoned a field for them to sit on under a shade tree and the two sat together, waiting for Steven's dad to pick them up.

Despite the heat, Connie leaned into Steven, resting her head on his shoulder. It felt nice.

* * *

They'd ridden out to the barn and used the nearby warp pad to visit her mom's sanctuary. It was a necessary follow-up to purging the Nightmare Monster, as she, Steven, and the Crystal Gems had learned oh-so-dramatically a couple months ago.

It was night in the sanctuary, lit only by the moon and the glow of frolicking Rubies.

No surprise run in with Garnet. No bumping into Bismuth. No one present save for the two teens and the corrupted. Just on a hunch, the weight of dozens of coming-of-age stories compelling her, Connie tried to summon her sword while standing before her mother's statue.

The dispassionate calm imposed on her by the sanctuary stymied her attempts. Even remembering the moment of Pearl and Amethyst's impending defeat failed to stoke the usual fires of righteous indignation. Without that, her gem would glow, there would sometimes be a yellowish sparkles in the air, but the weapon failed to manifest.

Connie frowned but let the matter drop. She could always summon the sword elsewhere and bring it to the sanctuary if needed. Steven, meanwhile, was in the outer courtyard studying one of the tall pillars covered in gem writing. He had his gem decoder ring out and was glancing back and forth between it and the alien writing. That put a smile back on Connie's face.

They left soon after, Connie's hand finding Steven's as they stepped onto the warp pad.

* * *

They were riding back to Beach City in Mr. Universe's van, Connie staring out the window and looking at nothing in particular, clinging to the lingering, magical calm just a little longer. It helped keep her from sparking up, if nothing else.

Steven must have picked up on her mood because he was leaving her be and chatting idly with his dad instead. "Wow, sounds like you guys had your own mission here around town," said Mr. Universe, adding, "And, uh, wherever that floating statue place is."

"Somewhere over the Philippines, I think," said Connie looking suddenly thoughtful. Had she and Steven gone on a mission today? _Fought and bubbled a monster? Check. Visited gem ruins? Check. Faced down a strange and unknowable remnant of the war for Earth? Big check on that one. Performed maintenance on ancient gemtech and/or magic? If you counted what I did at Mom's sanctuary, then check._

"Huh, I guess we did," said Connie. And when she compared this mission against the one she'd made earlier that day...

She scooched a little closer to Steven and gave his hand a squeeze. He turned and graced her with a surprised smile, not sure what had brightened her mood but clearly happy it had.

Mr. Universe chuckled. "Man, back in my day, if the power was out, I'd just noodle around on my guitar or spend all day at the pool. I certainly wouldn't be going on adventures!" He shook his head. "What do you two think you're going to do next?"

Connie blinked. What _were_ they going to do? Normally they'd go to Steven's house and play video games, but there was no power and she _certainly_ wasn’t going to attempt another toaster maneuver on Steven’s gaming consoles. Alternatively, they'd go to Connie's house and read, but that was unappealing for entirely different reasons. And with Peedee working, that meant _Lutes and Loot_ was out too.

No, the thought of going back home really didn't sound like fun, and there was always the risk of running into one of the gems around town. Then she might get swept back up into… _all of that_ all over again.

Something Lapis had said earlier that month came to mind, about a pretty island that was far away from everyone. "Um, actually, if Steven's interested, and if it's alright with you and Mrs. Universe, I was thinking maybe he and I could go camping."

"Camping?" asked father and son alike.

"Yeah. I think I know a nice place for it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The promo was drawn by BurdenKing.
> 
> And so Season 2 of Connie Swap has begun! We'll you Wednesday, September 26th for the next exciting installment of _Be Wherever You Aren't!_
> 
> These last couple weeks have been big for omakes. There's one you may have seen before, _Escape from Homeworld_ , but the canon omake has been completed, with two final chapters added! Anyway, check out all this majesty:
> 
> *) [Exploration](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673391/chapters/37241963) by [BinaryGeek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BinaryGeek/pseuds/BinaryGeek) \- "Mary tries to walk the fine line of respecting her son’s privacy, and making sure he and Connie are being sensible, especially when it comes to magic and fusion but also more human pastimes."
> 
> *) [Twinkle, Twinkle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673391/chapters/37243871) by [br42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/br42/pseuds/br42) \- "During a relaxed evening of stargazing, Steven asks the gems where they're all from."
> 
> *) [Escape from Homeworld](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673391/chapters/33132777) by [br42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/br42/pseuds/br42), [BurdenKing](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BurdenKing/pseuds/BurdenKing), [MjStudioArts](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MjStudioArts/pseuds/MjStudioArts) \- "Novaculite, a warp pad technician and veteran from Earth, needs to find a way to the one planet she knows Homeworld won’t follow her." Note: Contains original art from MJStudioArts. **This fic is 100% canon.**
> 
> *) [Momma-Dot 3.0](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673391/chapters/37426370) by [MjStudioArts](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MjStudioArts/pseuds/MjStudioArts) \- "Lapis returns home to visit Peridot and the baby." **This fic is 100% canon.**
> 
> * * *
> 
> If you have a Connie Swap story burning in your soul that you want to see in our official, curated Omake collection, drop us a comment either in the Omake fic or here in the main fic and we'll get in touch.
> 
> Connie Swap has an official Discord for the fans. [Come check it out.](https://discord.gg/RQMDdhr)
> 
> As usual, we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments and your asks at the [Connie Swap Tumblr](http://connieswap.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading!


	3. Island Time

Connie and Steven were walking down Thayer street in the direction of Connie's house, each wearing a hiking pack: a heavy-duty backpack with an internal metal frame. Mr. Universe owned quite a bit of camping equipment, an assortment of which the teens were borrowing. But the tents and sleeping bags would come later; for now, they were heading to Connie's house to pack assorted gemtech, weapons, survival gear, and reading materials.

Camping essentials, really.

Connie was transferring her sword from one hand to the other when Steven surprised her with a loud cry of "Hi Sadie!" Connie having to scramble to catch her weapon before it dissolved.

Sure enough, the stocky blonde was locking up the back door to the Big Donut. Pocketing her keys and brushing an errant feather from her shoulder, Sadie gave the pair a modest smile. "Oh, hey Steven. Hi Connie." She took in the packs they were wearing, an eyebrow quirking up. "You guys going on a trip or something?"

"Yeah!" enthused Steven. "Connie knows about this super pretty island and we're going to warp there and camp for a day or two since the mayor told my dad it'd take that long before the government got the electrical grid rebuilt."

Sadie blinked. "Huh. That sounds kind cool, actually. Beats what I'm doing."

"What are you doing?" asked Connie. "The Big Donut's closed with the outage." _If it were open, I wouldn't have destroyed the toaster trying to make breakfast,_ she inwardly groused.

Sadie glanced up and down the surrounding streets before saying in a slightly weary tone, "Ah, Mom found some of the choral arrangements I bought from the music shop, so she's had the two of us calling every choir and singing competition in the phone book."

"You sing?" Connie couldn't keep the surprise out of her voice.

Sadie scowled. "Not anymore. Anyway, I've been coming by to feed Lil’ Wilford..." Her hand went to rub the back of her neck and she gave a humorless chuckle. "...Four or five times a day. If it weren't for Mom's postal route, Wilford would probably be the size of a grapefruit by now."

_I guess I'm not the only one trying to get away from home._

As though hearing her thoughts, Steven looked at Connie, his unspoken question clear as day. Connie mulled it over for a split second and then gave a minute nod in response.

Steven gestured at their hiking packs. "You know, if you wanted to, you could-" 

He didn't get any farther, because Sadie exclaimed, "YES, PLEASE! I'LL PACK RIGHT NOW!" Shuffling her feet a little and coughing into her fist, she said in a softer voice, "I mean, sure. That sounds like fun."

She stared at the teens for a few seconds longer before slowly walking past them. Her walk soon became a jog and then a run, the blonde sprinting for her home, presumably to try and get in and out before Ms. Miller finished delivering the taped-together letters from the earlier monster attack.

Connie and Steven shared another look before collectively shrugging and resuming their hike toward the Beach House.

* * *

If Connie hadn't seen Lapis' so-so shapeshifting in action before, she'd swear the gem had altered her face so it could smile wider.

"Mask Island, eh? Oh, I'm sure you and Pinkie will have a _great_ time," cooed the gem.

Mercifully, Steven had left after they'd finished packing. It meant he wasn't there while Lapis oozed smug satisfaction all over the place. No, he'd gone home so he and his dad could drive over the bulkier equipment. Also to loan his parents the warp whistle, one of the two requirements they'd had in agreeing to let Steven go.

The other requirement Connie was tackling right now, the sword in her grip sparkling with weaponized embarrassment. "Yes, Steven, _Sadie,_ and I are going to go camp on Mask Island for a couple of days. Steven's parents wanted you to know so that you could fly out to us if something happened."

 _Why wasn't Jasper the one with wings?_ bemoaned Connie, catching the full blast of Lapis' smug smugness of greater smugitude.

Connie's mention of the third camper didn't dissuade the gem. "Oh, don't worry, the way that island's laid out, you won't have to run into anyone you don't want to."

Connie's hands made their way to her hips. "So that means I won't bump into you?"

Lapis rolled her eyes, her grin invulnerable. "Har har. No, I’ll hold down the fort here, make sure my mangas don’t run away. Besides, ever since we cleared out all of the invisible corruptions, the island just hasn't had that same pizzazz as it used to." She raised a finger to her cheek in a show of thought. "Or did we clear them all out? It's hard to tell when they're invisible." She gave an exaggerated shrug. "Better sleep two to a tent, you know, for safety." 

Connie knew the wink was coming but she still flinched when it did. At least the invisible corruption bit was, no pun intended, transparent enough she didn't have to spend the energy rebutting it.

Instead she managed a smirk of her own and replied, "Well, Sadie was able to keep you from stealing donuts at the Big Donut, and she was really capable when we were escaping the Nightmare Monster, so if we bunked together I'm sure we could keep each other safe."

Lapis' huff was a thing of beauty.

Then there was the sound of the door opening and shutting behind Connie, and she saw Lapis' expression shift into a grimace. Leaning in she whispered into Connie’s good ear, "Seems pretty mean to do that to Stevedore."

There inside the Beach House was Sadie, a heavy pack topped with a rolled up sleeping mat on her back and a Bismuth-crafted spear in her hand. She gave Connie an anxious wave as, standing beside her, looking over the house's interior with a skeptical expression, was Lars.

"Hey Connie. Uh, hi Lapis." Sadie's grin was wide but her eyes betrayed her nervousness.

Connie was about to say something when Steven and Mr. Universe appeared, buried under bundles of camping gear. Her friend nudged the door open and then exclaimed, "Hey everyb- Oh cool! Is Lars coming too?!"

Connie's shoulders slumped forward in defeat. Then Steven's dad squeezed in through the crowded doorway, being careful to avoid Sadie’s spear as he said, "Sorry gang but I could only find two tents. I guess the rest are still in the storage unit out in Wilmingmore."

Connie didn't look because she didn't have to; she could _feel_ Lapis' terrible, triumphant smirk.

* * *

The tone of the warp pad was followed by the tail end of a scream. “-Aah!”

Lars pinwheeled his arms as gravity reasserted itself, inadvertently elbowing Connie in the face as she tried to keep the warp-newbie from toppling over. Steven, meanwhile, helped Sadie land on her feet, the stocky blonde having started to float off during transit.

“Why didn’t you tell me that magic elevator thing was dangerous?!” snapped the carrot-haired camper.

“Oh, it’s not dangerous,” said Steven while Connie rubbed her nose and scowled. “It just takes some getting used to. I fell over, like, a dozen times before I got the hang of it.”

Sadie seemed relieved to be on solid ground again but whatever she was going to add was lost in a gasp of awe, one the others were quick to join.

“Whoooa.”

They were standing in a tropical forest, warm but not so hot as Delmarva had been. A shaft of light pierced the canopy and was shining on a geode the size of Mr. Universe’s van, the many-hued facets scattering the light fantastically. Through a break in the trees the group could see a rise, down which a waterfall of crystal clear water cascaded. The bluff itself was girded in bands of sparkling crystal, and there looked to be even larger geodes higher still, open to the tropical air. The sky was a flawless blue dotted with white, puffy clouds, and a cool breeze blew in from the ocean.

It was a paradise, pristine and fantastic.

“Eh, it’s okay,” mumbled Lars before pulling out his phone and scoffing at the lack of signal.

“No, this is amazing,” breathed Sadie, eyes wide with wonder. Steven was quick to nod in enthusiastic agreement. The blonde couldn’t tear her eyes off the view while she asked Connie, “And this is where the Crystal Gems go on vacation?” A beat later she added in a low voice, “Why bother living in Beach City at all?”

Connie shook her head even though Sadie wasn’t watching. “I’ve never been here before, actually. Though Lapis did say this island was made for important visitors from Homeworld, so I guess it counts as a vacation spot.”

“Homeworld?” That seemed to sober Sadie a little, the blonde finally meeting Connie’s eye.

“It’s like Krypton for Superman, but for gems. Oh, and it didn’t blow up,” explained Steven from where he’d wandered over to poke at the sides of the geode. “The Crystal Gems even came to Earth to protect it, though I don’t think sunlight makes them invulnerable.” A thoughtful expression crossed his face, a hundred crystalline reflections of him doing the same. “Maybe Jasper.”

Connie shook her head and smiled. “No, Jasper’s just that tough. Anyway, I think we should look for a good camping spot and get set up.” She glanced at the sky. “It looks like it’s still morning here so we’ve got plenty of time until dark, but there could be a tropical shower midday.”

Sadie gave her an appraising look and nodded, then hauled one of the rolled up tents onto her shoulder. Lars rolled his eyes and picked up the duffle bag he’d brought. Steven gathered his things, mostly comprised of novelty food-themed luggage, and shot Connie a smile.

Connie shouldered her pack, grinned back, then closed her eyes in concentration. A moment later she was holding her sword, a frown and eyes of steely determination lingering on her face. Then she waded out into the brush and began to blaze a trail for the others, the flawless instrument of righteousness serving as a pretty good machete.

* * *

For their campsite, the group settled on a geode cave, a massive and marvelous structure that would shelter them from the wind and rain and looked _amazing_ from within. Steven was chipper to the point of nearly bursting into song, but Lars still managed to put a frown on Connie's face now and again. Still, Sadie seemed happy even if she was doing ninety percent of the work putting up the tent she and Lars would share, so Connie held her tongue.

After setting up camp, the group went for a hike, exploring the island and gawking at the wondrous terrain. Connie carried her sword, Sadie was using her spear as a walking stick, and Steven's buckler was in his backpack. Lars brought his attitude.

Crystal caverns; a coursing rapid of cool, clear water flowing down a channel lined in perfectly smooth quartz; flawless white sand beaches; arches and other implausible rock formations, all decorated with the ubiquitous geodes; bands of multi-colored crystals running horizontally through the hills; a gorgeous waterfall, complete with amphitheater-like geode hidden behind it.

 _And not a single gem in sight,_ Connie thought. She breathed deep, a sense of calm descending over her. Then Steven tapped her on the forearm with a cry of, “Tag!” and just like that Connie was chasing after him, their peals of laughter echoing across the island paradise.

* * *

They swam. The water was perfect and the sand was cushy. After some cajoling, Sadie managed to get Lars into the water too. She’d brought along a plastic, inflatable ring which she blew up and then she and Lars took turns lounging in it while the other hung off the side and paddled around, one or both of them occasionally splashing Connie or Steven for the heck of it. The four of them were in the middle of a pitched battle of chicken (Connie on Steven's shoulders, Lars on Sadie's) when the midday shower happened. The game continuing despite the rain.

After a hastily-eaten lunch, still in their swim clothes, Steven confirmed that the crystal-lined rapids were like a water park ride that dumped you out onto the beach. Everyone rode it at least once but Connie and Steven spent probably an hour and a half being washed out to the surf and then running enthusiastically upriver to ride again, signing at one another as they did since Connie had her remaining hearing aid out. Sadie and Lars mostly hung out in the shade and talked.

After another meal break (it was dinner time back in Beach City even if it was only late afternoon here), Connie wanted to go explore some of the caverns they'd found, flashlights and a glowing yellow sword lighting the way. The group found some fantastic crystal formations, stalactites and stalagmites resplendent in many-hued majesty, seeming all the more colorful for being out of the tropical sun. Lars slipped on a damp patch of floor and griped so much afterwards, Connie was relieved when Sadie led him out and back to camp.

As the sun was starting to fall towards the horizon, Sadie suggested they hike up the bluff to watch the sunset. Lars groused about his lingering injury but ran to join the trio when it became clear they were willing to go without him. They had to use some of Connie's force fields to get high enough, but they made it before the sun reached the horizon.

Sadie cozied up to Lars, her head on his shoulder. Connie and Steven shared a bag of trail mix, talking contentedly as day transitioned to dusk.

* * *

Steven and Sadie had gathered firewood while Connie got the kindling to smoulder and then spark into a modest flame. While the Beach City curriculum taught survival skills, most were related to first aid and disaster response, not roughing it in the wilderness. Fortunately, Connie's own training was up to the task. Lars, meanwhile, had gone through the group's food options and was waiting impatiently nearby, a cooking pot in hand.

Fire now burning merrily, Connie summoned two small, horizontal force fields over the flame, with a four-inch gap between them centered over the hottest part of the campfire. That way Lars was able to rest the pot on the fields over the fire; there were probably other, mundane ways to cook soup over an open flame but who cared because, _magic._ Lars emptied several cans of hearty soup into the pot and began stirring with a spoon while Sadie used the empty cans to ferry him water from a nearby spring.

"One of your yellow dealies is too high," grumbled Lars. "It's not level."

Connie scowled as she found a downed log to sit on. "Once I summon a field, I can't move it."

Sadie handed him another can of water and said, "It's camping, Lars. Camping with magic on an impossibly pretty island. Cope."

Lars muttered something under his breath while he added salt and pepper to the dinner. Sadie remarked that it was still better than having to work at the Big Donut and not even Lars could disagree with that.

Steven rummaged through his stuff and found his ukulele, flopping down in the ring of firelight and began tuning. He paused while a yawn split his face, one which Connie couldn't help but repeat. "I guess it is, like, almost midnight back home.” He rubbed at one eye, ukulele draped across his lap. “Plus, I'm always really tired the night after visiting the quarry."

Sadie had been assembling bowls and spoons for the soup but looked up. "You went to the quarry?" she asked in a surprised voice. "Was that thing still there?"

"The Nightmare Monster? Y-" Another yawn interrupted Steven. "Yeah. It was really playful and not super-duper big like I heard it was when you were there with the Cool Kids."

Lars paused in his stirring to ask Sadie, "You went to the quarry with Buck and the others?"

The blonde looked a little embarrassed. "Oh, yeah, just this one time. There was a monster and everyone acted a little crazy before Connie did her magical glowing thing and fixed everything. It's-" She shook her head. "My memories from that are kinda weird."

As the sole, semi-reliable witness, Connie explained. "The Nightmare Monster is this mysterious thing that sleeps in the abandoned quarry outside town. It gets bigger and more active over time until I use my gemstone to shrink it back down. It's like magical maintenance or, I don't know, pet care, maybe?" she said, her voice inflecting into a question at the end.

"It gives off bad vibes radiation which makes you all sad or angry or insecure," added Steven, still fiddling with his uke.

"Why don't your moms clean up after this thing? It's their pet, isn't it?" Lars sampled the soup and then added some more spices.

Connie let the 'moms' statement slide, though she couldn't suppress a small head shake. "I'm the only one who can do it because it requires a citrine gemstone. Since the Nightmare Monster makes people act irregularly, possibly violently-" A memory of Jasper's rampage at the sanctuary flitted through Connie's mind. "-The gems stay away." 

Then, wanting to shift the subject, Connie turned to Sadie and said with a bit more of a smile, "That advice of yours during the trip out to the quarry --about compartmentalization and accentuating the positive-- was really good, by the way. It's been helpful with... things." She and Steven shared a furtive glance.

Sadie didn't seem to know what to do with the surprise compliment. "Oh, I'm glad." She arranged four bowls with spoons in them on one of the fields near Lars, then turned to Connie, her expression concerned. "Are things still tense with the whole, uh, mom thing and people bailing?"

During the drive out to the quarry, Connie had told Sadie and the Cool Kids about how she was there because her mom wasn't, something she suspected weighed on the gems, and how everyone except Peridot had a history of bailing on her. It had been February at the time so the drama over New Year's had still been fresh and oh-so-relevant.

Connie blew out a breath, slid down the log to the ground, and stared into the fire a second longer before answering. "Sorta? If you'd asked me last week I would have said yes. But now..." She shook her head, shoulders slumping. "No."

Steven set down his instrument and sat beside her, a hand gripping her own in comfort.

Lars and Sadie exchanged a look, the former asking, "Parents being idiots?" He took another sip of soup, nodded to himself, and began ladling out the contents into the bowls.

"Pretty much. Only now it's Peridot who's gone. Well, she locked herself in her room, but it's not that different. And Lapis and Jasper don't really think what they did was wrong and I've worked so hard to make things better and coming home... It's hot, nothing works, no one agrees with me, and every time I think of making it better, of fighting the fights and having the arguments, I just want to... not do that." She slumped forward. "I’d rather just go somewhere else." 

There was silence for a time, Sadie distributing the bowls of soup to the group before sitting down. Lars set the pot on a nearby rock so the remainder wouldn't burn, which was good because one and then both of the force fields winked out less than a minute later.

Connie blew dejectedly across her soup before she sat upright again and said at volume, "I'm thirteen!" Steven managed to catch her bowl before it sloshed over, moving it to his lap while his friend had her rant. "Peridot, Jasper, and Lapis are older than the United States, recorded history, and the current geologic epoch, respectively. Why can't they be the ones to figure this stuff out?!"

Lars stared at Connie as if to see if she was done, testing the temperature of the soup as he did. "Screw 'em," he said. "They make a mess, let them clean it up." He blew across his spoon and took a sip.

Connie stared at Lars with an abstracted look on her face, as though not quite able to accept that he, of all people, was being supportive of her. She glanced at Sadie, looking to the blonde for confirmation that the impossible had happened.

Sadie shrugged. "I mean, I'm basically here to hide from my mom, so, yeah, I get where you're coming from." She leaned into Lars --something he accepted without comment-- and added, “If it weren’t for the Big Donut or hanging out at Lars’ place, I’d probably have- have- I don’t know, stowed away on Sour Cream’s tour bus and changed my name.”

“Actually, that’s what my mom did!” exclaimed Steven. “Oh, uh, with my dad, not Sour Cream, and he didn’t have a tour bus back then, it was just a van.” He blinked then asked, “Sorry, what were we talking about again?”

Lars shook his head. “Your family is weird, Steven.”

Connie’s hackles raised at that --literally, her hair poofing up a little with static-- and Sadie gave him a nudge in mild reprimand, adding, “You say that but he’s the only one not trying to get away from his.”

“You’re avoiding your parents too?” Connie hadn’t realized it but she’d quickly consumed the contents of her bowl and looked down surprised when she heard the spoon rasp against the bottom of the container.

Lars stood up abruptly, causing Sadie to nearly topple over, went over, and began fussing with the cookware. “What is this, a therapy session? At least I still have two parents-” Sadie flinched. “-And not four moms who are all sad that I’m wearing the fifth one-” Connie’s expression and hair could only be described as _‘stormy.’_ “-And they’re not, like, runaway musicians.” Steven didn’t seem phased by the verbal jab but he was clearly unhappy at the situation.

The carrot-haired camper gathered up his bowl and the pot and tromped over to the nearby stream, muttering under his breath while he began rinsing them off.

Connie’s hand had gone to her gemstone and she glared daggers at the retreating figure. Sadie opened her mouth to say something, sighed, and went back to eating her soup. Steven gave Connie’s hand a final squeeze and then walked back over to where he’d set down his ukulele. He picked it up, and said with a lightness at odds with the prevailing mood, “I’m pretty bushed but I was hoping to play a song or two before going to bed.”

Sadie blinked. “Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen you play anything before, Steven. Seems weird now that I think about it.”

The teen rubbed the back of his neck and said, a touch embarrassed, “Yeah, I used to be really nervous about it. I thought I couldn’t be a good musician because I couldn’t really hear the music right. Then Connie made it so I could hear fine and I realized I just kinda stinked at playing.” He gave a small chuckle to diffuse the self-effacing remark. “But I’ve been practicing a lot since then and I’m getting better.”

Connie’s hackles lowered and Sadie looked on, curious. Lars, meanwhile, used the pool ring from earlier to float out into the creek, putting a literal moat between him and the lameness happening around the fire.

Steven strummed a few notes, adjusted a peg on his instrument, got his fingers positioned, and then said, “This was something dad used to play for me when we were living in the tour bus. I think it was supposed to help me feel better about moving around all the time. He calls it, _Be Wherever You Are.”_

It was a pretty song and Connie couldn’t help but watch her friend play with rapt attention. There was just something disarmingly _right_ about seeing Steven play music, like he was subtly out of focus until you handed him an instrument and then he looked truly Steven-like. Plus, lit by the glow of the campfire, singing under a thousand stars while surrounded by the lush island landscape…

Connie must have been sitting too close to the fire because she was feeling a little flushed.

Her stare lingered for a second after Steven finished his song, Connie blinking in surprise when she heard Sadie clapping. She was quick to join in, though, cheering with gusto at her friend’s performance.

“Encore!” cried Sadie and Steven was kind enough to oblige his audience. 

During the second pass of the song, Connie found words of her own flitting to the surface of her thoughts. It was kind of an inversion of the original song, wanting to get away rather than appreciating where you were. However, she’d been stewing over her home situation for days now and some corner of her mind seemed eager for a release in lyrical form.

By the time the final chord faded out, Connie rose to her feet and, a touch embarrassed asked, “Hey Steven? Would you mind playing it one more time? I wanted to try singing it, only, uh, with some different words.” She paused and then hastily added, “If that’s okay, I mean.”

Steven looked more surprised then off-put and quickly rallied, wiggling his nose with one hand as their in-sign for ‘okay’ and then strumming the opening note. After a faltering start, Connie found her voice and the rhythm, they started again, and she sang.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_It was just such- an ugly fight… Whoa-o._  
_Caught between my friends and Peridot..._

_It’s awful to find my family distant- Whoa-o._  
_I want to let myself just be wherever they’re not..._

_Look at this mess, I’m in distre-e-e-ess._  
_I’ll never understand their train of thought._

_It’s awful to find my family distant- Whoa-o._  
_I want to let myself just be wherever they’re not..._

_They got away, I saved the da-a-a-ay._  
_They’re going home because of how we fought._

_It’s awful to find my family distant- Whoa-o._  
_I want to let myself just be wherever they’re not..._

_Why can’t they help themselves and be a little bit different? Whoa-o._  
_Why must I go away and be wherever they’re not?_

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Steven's smile was tinged with concern, but he seemed genuinely happy for his friend's performance. Sadie, meanwhile, whooped and hollered, briefly reminding Connie that she was in fact Barbara Miller's daughter and had a voice you could _feel_. Cheeks suddenly blazing like twin suns, Connie hastily hustled over to the far side of the log and sat down.

While Steven was burying Connie in praise, Sadie said something about celebrating and dug through the group's stuff. Eventually she produced a circular tin of homemade cookies and offered one to Steven and Connie. They were pecan sandies. _Good_ pecan sandies. Good pecan sandies with a kick of cinnamon or ginger.

Connie was reaching for her third when she paused long enough to say, "Wow, Sadie. These are _really_ good cookies!" Steven nodded emphatically beside her.

Sadie wiped crumbs from her mouth, chewed for a moment longer, then said, "Thanks but I didn't bake them."

"Your mom did?"

Sadie laughed. "Ha! No, if Mom goes into the kitchen she's going to walk out with a steak and potatoes or maybe a salad that's mostly cheese. These were baked by Lars."

The person in question had at some point gotten out of the floaty, gathered his toiletries, and was brushing his teeth down by the stream.

Feeling a touch awkward, Connie said in a carrying voice, "The cookies are real tasty, Lars. Uh, thanks."

The surly camper spat noisily then said, "Meh, they're okay, I guess." He gargled and spat again. "Couldn't use the mixer since the power was out so the butter wasn't properly whipped."

"Oh, yeah. Sorry about that," said Connie, feeling a little unmoored at apologizing to Lars.

He paused in packing away his toiletries to say, "Why? It was some dumb monster chewing on a power line or something that knocked out the electricity."

"Oh, well, actually these two gems built a spaceship and I helped them escape but their engine shorted out the town's power grid while they flew off." Connie paused a beat and added, "It's why things are really awkward at home for me right now."

Lars bolted to his full, lanky height. "What?! This is all your fault?! These last three days have sucked and- Ugh! I should have known! Anytime something crazy happens, you or your stupid moms are involved! You know how many times I got drenched when your blue mom was banned from the Big Donut? Or how many times your green, robot mom lectured me about tranny fats? And the first time your rainbow mom shows up, I start breathing fire for some reason!"

Sadie hurried to her feet and ran over to try and break up the tirade, but Lars shoved past her. "Whatever, I'm going to sleep. Steven, keep your weirdo girlfriend from catching my tent on fire with her disaster powers."

Steven opened his mouth to object to, well, he had a lot to choose from, but there was a sharp crackle that even managed to sound angry. Looking at Connie he yelped and then said to her in a soft voice, "Uh, Connie. I think we're all tired and cranky and stuff, and we'll feel better in the morning. But, uh, maybe you should go throw some lightning into the ocean first."

Connie glared at the tent Lars ducked into before she looked at Steven and allowed her expression softened, her teeth unclenching a little. She drew a deep breath, hair and clothes crackling with static as she did. Then she turned and both figuratively and literally stormed off.

Half an hour later she was laying in her sleeping bag, feeling simultaneously bone-tired and unable to sleep. Steven was lying beside her and she couldn't help but notice he had made a point of placing himself between her and the direction of Lars and Sadie's tent. She tossed and turned, trying not to disturb the sleeping figure beside her, displeased if not outright angry with most of reality just then. Eventually she fell into a kind of frustrated slumber, teeth grinding as she drifted off.

* * *

It was like a mosaic. Or a fractal; simultaneously simple and complex. Whatever it was, it was fascinating. It was something. Something _impressive._

Connie woke up, stretched, and smiled, quietly putting in her hearing aid. Rainbow-hued light, reflecting off the crystal-lined walls of their shelter, was shining through the open tent flap and across Steven's sleeping form. It was adorable and serene and Connie had to resist the urge to hug Steven for being so darn cute.

When Connie had been five or six, she'd apparently woken up so happy and bursting with sweetness that Lapis had coined the term 'princess sleep' to describe the phenomenon. As Connie rose carefully, trying not to disturb Steven in the process, she knew she'd just woken up from a night of princess sleep.

A sobering thought and a quick check confirmed that she hadn't _actually_ reverted to being a five- or six-year-old.

Stepping out of the tent, Connie stretched again and looked over the paradisiacal landscape, breathing deep the morning air. It was cool with just that faint tang of brine that made it invigorating. This was nice.

The details of the night before filtered back to her and Connie pursed her lips slightly before shrugging. Tempers had run high last night but Steven had been right: a good night's sleep would see everyone feeling better. Thirsty, Connie started to walk over to where her canteen was stowed when something crunched underfoot.

Stepped aside, she peered down and saw... one of Lars’ pecan sandies. _What?_

Looking around with a bit less 'joie de vivre' and a bit more 'what's going on' Connie noticed lots of small things scattered about. A toothbrush. Two of Steven's red scrunchies. Some of Connie's socks. A hiking boot with the laces knotted up.

Stepping out of the mouth of the cave Connie gasped. 

From behind, Connie heard movement and grumbling that could only have been coming from Lars. Within the tent she heard Sadie mutter something and Lars hiss-whispered back, "I don't know. Check in the bottom of your sleeping bag. Or mine. It's got to be somewhere, Player Two."

Lars stepped forward and then froze, taking in the same sight as Connie: their camp ransacked and their belongings scattered, including a number of... _undergarments_ strung up between the trees and flapping in the morning breeze.

Numbly, Lars walked over to a nearby tree and pulled something that could only belong to Sadie out of the branches. Then, caught between mortification and rage, he shot Connie a sharp look and double-timed it to the tent, thrusting his arm through the flap with a low, "Found it."

The effects of Connie's princess sleep thoroughly dispelled, she turned to wake up Steven so he could help her face... whatever the heck all of this was.

* * *

The shouting match had, mercifully, been short, with Lars being more concerned with finding all of his and Sadie's stuff than with venting his frustrations all over Connie. After everyone was awake, clothed, and done boggling at the disarray, they broke camp with record speed.

Connie had thought Lapis' 'invisible monster' quip had been a dumb joke. But after mentioning it to the others, to judge from how everyone was huddled together and armed (Lars having produced a heavy length of chain from somewhere in his luggage), no one felt it was particularly funny.

The cumbersome things --tents, cookware, sleeping bags-- were all left packed in the back of the geode cave. At some later time, backed by Jasper and Lapis, Connie could come back for them. For now, everyone was carrying their packs and their weapons and nothing more.

It was time to go.

"What would an invisible gem person even look like?" wondered Steven as he and the other three watched their surroundings closely, following Connie's trail towards the warp pad.

"It wouldn't look like anything, duh," snarked Lars. "That's what invisible means."

Steven continued, unphased from the barb. "Well, yeah, but would it be completely invisible, like air, or would it be kinda blurry when it moved-"

"Oh, like the Predator," interjected Sadie. She met Connie and Lars' confused/incredulous expressions with a shrug. "It's an Action-Horror hybrid from the eighties about an invisible alien hunter. They made a franchise out of it. Really? Nothing?" She shook her head. "I guess I need to talk to Buck about hosting some more movie nights."

 _Invisible alien hunter might not be too far off the mark,_ Connie considered grimly, electricity licking up and down the length of her sword. _Or, considering it was more interesting in scattering our clothes over the campsite, maybe more of an invisible prankster. If I didn't know for a fact that Amethyst was outside the solar system, I'd be looking for a purple owl right now._

"Or, like, maybe the body is invisible but you can see the gemstone." Steven was walking beside Connie, shield at the ready as he theorized.

"Well, if you see anything out of the ordinary," said Connie, trying to keep everyone focused, "let me know."

They walked a little further before entering the clearing that should have held the warp pad. Connie blinked, looking this way and that. "Where'd the warp pad go?" _This makes no sense. You can't just vanish a giant slab of magical crystal._

In a dry voice, Lars said, "Uh, you mean behind that obvious pile of leaves and sticks over there?"

She looked. Oh, yeah, that was really obvious. That that would fool anyone for even a minute was a stretch and her cheeks were flushing slightly with embarrassment at not spotting it sooner. "Yeah, uh, that. Sadie, Lars, you guys clear the pad off while Steven and I stay on guard."

Sadie nodded and began to use the shaft of her spear to clear away the leaves. Lars grumbled something and used his chain to ineffectually brush the pad clear.

Connie scanned the area, shoulder-to-shoulder with Steven. Something had to be out there and it was her responsibility to make sure it didn't hurt anyone. She did have a bag of climber's chalk in her pack. Maybe she could throw it on the monster so they'd have a visible outline they could-

"Ugh! What the heck is that stuff?!"

Connie swiveled around at the sound of Lars' voice and saw Sadie trying to scrape the bottom of her spear against a nearby rock, something black sticking to the shaft. Then she saw the warp pad and she gasped for the second time that morning.

The pad was still partially obscured with a haphazard scattering of camouflage, but all of it that she could see was covered in an oily black substance. It was thick, inky, and there was something about the way it clung to the underlying crystal that just _looked_ tenacious. The tiny patch Sadie's spear had prodded was, before Connie's very eyes, oozing back into position, the shining blue crystal beneath being obscured.

"The Nightmare Monster?!" she exclaimed in disbelief.

Sadie yelped, her effort to clean her spear forgotten as she whipped the weapon to face the pad. "It's here?!"

Had it followed Connie here for some reason? Her gemstone wasn't glowing and she didn't feel unnaturally warm, but the gunk definitely looked similar. But there was something else about this scene that looked familiar, somewhere else she'd seen something like this but she was having the hardest time-

A bush on the edge of the clearing moved, as though something had darted through it. A shield, magical sword, spear, and length of chain all spun in that direction.

Then the leaves of a tree behind them rustled and everyone swiveled around, Lars having to duck at the last second to avoid getting cuffed by the shaft of Sadie's spear. Then there was the noise of movement to their flanks. Then on four sides. And then a dozen at once, all around them.

Back-to-back, side-to-side the group pressed into each other for mutual defense. Connie drew a deep breath, entering a kind of readied inactivity, like a snake coiled to strike. Steven squared his shoulders and absently used the force field on his shield to rub at a spot on his cheek that was apparently itchy. Sadie gripped her spear so tightly, even with only one working hearing aid Connie could hear it creak. Lars whined, "I knew I shouldn't have gone on this stupid trip!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lyrics to _Be Wherever They're Not_ were written by the Connie Swap Team. The art was drawn by BurdenKing.
> 
> Also, in the Connie Swap Discord, a bout of discussion between readers turned into the idea of episode bingo cards. And from that came the following, by the talented [BinaryGeek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BinaryGeek/pseuds/BinaryGeek).  
>   
> Incidentally, BinaryGeek has also written a [pair](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673391/chapters/36408351) of [omakes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673391/chapters/37241963). If you haven't read them, you should. They're great.
> 
> See you next Wednesday for the next exciting installment of _Be Wherever You Aren't!_
> 
> * * *
> 
> If you have a Connie Swap story burning in your soul that you want to see in our official, curated Omake collection, drop us a comment either in the Omake fic or here in the main fic and we'll get in touch.
> 
> Connie Swap has an official Discord for the fans. [Come check it out.](https://discord.gg/RQMDdhr)
> 
> As usual, we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments and your asks at the [Connie Swap Tumblr](http://connieswap.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading!


	4. Sticky Situation

_Drill Two-Thirteen: ambush by an unknown enemy. First, assess surroundings, looking for threats and possible avenues for escape. Second, retreat with all due caution to a safe location and await reinforcements, unless there is an asset too valuable to leave behind. If so, third, fight decisively and with all the resources at your disposal._

The lesson, one of _many_ Jasper and Peridot had sought to instill in her during the long wait for her to come into even the smallest of her powers, thundered through Connie's head. They were in a partial clearing in a tropical forest beside a gunk-covered warp pad, while things unknown flitted through the foliage like sharks circling their prey. The camp had been ransacked, so whatever these things were, they probably didn't have their best interests at heart.

If it were just her and Steven, she might try and draw these out so she'd have intel to report back to the gems. But Lars and Sadie were pressed back-to-back, side-to-side with them and even with Bismuth-forged weapons (a chain and spear, respectively) in their hands, they were still civilians. Connie needed to get them out of the combat zone immediately.

"Everyone on the warp pad," she commanded in a low but carrying voice, an act of will needed to keep it below a shout. It wasn't known if these adversaries could understand language or not, so better to not risk giving anything away.

"What?" balked Lars. "That crystal thingy is all covered in black crap. We're going to step on the obvious trap and get stuck and then we're going to get eaten because we were idiots."

Connie wasn't surprised --He was Lars, after all-- but she was still annoyed. "It doesn't look sticky enough to hold us in place and the pad is mostly covered in leaves still, so stick to those areas. The point is, we need to get out of here immediately and that's the quickest way to safety. We all step on, I activate the warp, and then we're-"

The movement and thrashing grew even louder, causing Connie to go silent, sword crackling with energy and held out in front of her.

"I think we should do what she says, Lars," said Sadie, voice laced with tension. "She fights monsters for a living. We make donuts." A blur of motion in the treeline at the edge of the clearing caused her to raise her spear point a little higher. Her grip choked up on the weapon, more like it was a baseball bat she was preparing to swing than a spear that was almost as tall as she was.

Connie could only see the side of Lars' head in her peripheral vision, one of his ear gauges catching the light. She saw him shake his head, the carrot-colored tuft of hair swaying with the motion. "Fine!" he said a moment later and ran with long, lanky strides for the pad. Everyone else hustled to keep up.

The second they stepped on the pad, everyone doing their best to avoid the exposed, black, tar-like substance, Connie realized with a sinking sensation that the warp wasn't going to work. There was a kind of _connection_ , a feeling of potential that came from stepping on an active warp pad, and she felt none of that here. No, that wasn't quite right. It was there but muted, like she was trying to feel something through thick gloves. She willed the pad to warp them to the Beach House anyway but if it reacted at all, she couldn't see it through the covering tar.

The thrashing, somehow, rose further in intensity, whatever was out there clearly not happy at their course of action.

A small, black blur streaked across the clearing, disappearing back into the undergrowth too quickly for Connie to catch full sight of it. Connie heard another behind her, but she had to protect their front and would just have to trust Steven to alert her if they were attacked. Her friend gave a gasp of surprise but didn't cry out in alarm.

A scattering of leaves fell from overhead and the second one landed on Lars he flipped out, screaming and clawing at what he must have assumed was an attack from above. "GAH! GET US OUT OF HERE ALREADY!"

Sadie broke rank, turning around to check on the panicked camper, leaving an opening in their perimeter that an enemy leapt to capitalize on. Connie saw a two-headed eel whose body devolved into a mass of writhing shadow come rushing forward. Each head held a single eye, a vertical slit of a pupil visible amidst the pink sclera. It was the size of a large cat, maybe, but it was broader and its constantly shifting, amorphous body made scale hard to judge.

It didn't run or slither or fly, it traveled with an all-too-familiar and all-too-uncanny flickering movement, simply appearing a few feet closer to its destination with each ‘step’ like a stop motion animation come to life. And in that flickering way, it ran through Sadie's feet, oozed around Lars (prompting more yelling and flailing), and then scaled the blonde clerk like a squirrel up a tree, launching itself off her arm and away into the bushes.

If Connie didn't know any better, she'd swear she heard it snicker.

Another black, shadow thing flicker-ran over, tripping everyone up before repeating the exploit of the first, climbing Sadie amidst a great confusion of shouts and confusion. This one jumped off her head instead of her arm.

Steven was trying to get his shield into position to help but finding it difficult to maneuver. Connie was afraid to get in the scrum, an electrified magical sword making a poor weapon of choice in a disorganized fight among friendlies.

When a third tried to do the same as the others, Lars batted at it with his chain just as Sadie was trying to stab it out of the air with her spear. The chain whumped the creature, which miraculously allowed the spear to find its mark, skewering the shadow thing handily. However, Lars overextended himself with the swing, shoulder-checking Sadie as he stumbled forward. Sadie yelped in surprise and pain as her spear was knocked back into her face. 

The creature had been writhing like a speared fish. Or rather, it was writhing like a fish sprite from some old video game, flopping between two agonized poses with seemingly no movement in between. As the spear bounced back into Sadie's right cheek, the shadow thing reared over and... bit her? It didn't have a mouth per-se, its anatomy an ever-shifting enigma in eye-watering stygian non-movement, but Sadie's yell reached a new pitch as it lashed out at her. 

The primordial shadow seeming to shrink a little after breaking contact.

Sadie roared in response, her expression one more appropriate to a viking berserker than a stocky donut store clerk. She lunged forward, scattering the others like bowling pins, and stabbed her spear point-first into the dirt. The shadow critter wriggled helplessly, pinned in place, and then was angrily stomped out of existence, wisps of blackish _stuff_ stuck to the underside of her boots.

"Whoa," breathed Steven. Then he and Connie flinched back in unison as Sadie turned their way, her face a rictus of rage, her cut cheek bleeding freely.

"Anyone else want some?!" roared the blonde.

Despite that brutal display, a corner of Connie's mind reminded her: drill two-thirteen. They were still surrounded and the warp pad wasn't going to get them out of here.

"Everyone," called Connie, the girl briefly unnerved when Sadie's gaze of pure anger focused on her. "We need to retreat back to the camp site. We'll be safer there." If nothing else, she could use force fields to barricade them inside the geode cave to give them time to think. And bandage Sadie's cheek. That was a nasty cut.

"Says you! I'll take all of them on if I have to!" Sadie looked bellicose enough to try, wound or no wound.

There was more activity along the edge of the clearing and Lars looked around nervously. "Come on, Sadie! This is nuts! We need to get the heck away from these-"

"Shut it!" Sadie brandished her shadow-blackened spear to drive home the point.

That was when it clicked for Connie, what put this scene into a familiar context. She'd seen Sadie like this before, back in the quarry, loopy from the Nightmare Monster’s baleful aura. She had no idea what these little nightmare monsters meant, why they were on this island suddenly, but she knew from past experience how to handle the negative-energy dosed blonde.

"Sadie, are you the Final Girl or the one that gets eaten in the second act?" challenged Connie, falling back on some of the horror movie trope terms she'd learned from Sadie herself.

"I'm so final I survive the whole frickin' trilogy!" Sadie answered with fierce certainty.

"Then don't get separated from the group," said Connie as she, Lars, and Steven began a semi-organized retreat back the way they'd come.

Sadie glared at them, radiating a kind of Jasper-in-miniature aura of menace, then stomped forward, spear held firmly in both hands.

Connie spared a glance behind her and saw a bunch more shadow things crawling out of the foliage, some lingering over the warp pad -- _Adding more gunk?_ \-- but all of them heading their way.

"That looks like it's going to scar," muttered Lars, earning a growl from Sadie.

It was obvious they were being tailed as the group hustled back to their former campsite, but nothing seemed willing to challenge them. Looking at Sadie's crimson-stained expression of barely contained rage, Connie wasn't surprised.

* * *

Connie willed a trio of force fields into place, sealing the geode cave shut behind a transparent barricade of yellow.

Lars picked something up and walked over. "Sadie-"

"Rrah!"

"Hey! Sadie, knock it off and hold still!" barked Lars as he tried to clean away the blood so he could bandage the wound on her face. Steven stood nearby offering him gauze and antiseptic wipes from one of the first aid kits the group had packed.

_Right. That,_ thought Connie, her mind a little slower from the fields. She approached Sadie, then froze when the blonde glared at her furiously. No, not her. Her sword. With a heavy sigh, Connie allowed the weapon to drop from her grip, the blade dissolving into motes of yellow light. She could already feel her hair start to frizz up as a consequence, and the thought of having to repeatedly summon her sword today gave her a preemptive feeling of exhaustion.

Raising her now empty hands in a placating gesture, Connie approached once more, saying gently, "Sadie. You remember back at the quarry when you went all horror movie survival girl?"

Sadie gave a terse nod causing Lars, who was positioning the cotton pad over the cut, to make a scolding noise.

"It was because you had a bunch of negative energy making you angry and paranoid.” _At least she traded out the rusty length of rebar for a proper weapon this time,_ thought Connie. “I think the same thing happened to you here, maybe from when that thing bit you."

Lars continued to fuss. Connie chose to take Sadie's stony silence as confirmation and pressed on. "Last time I had to touch your forehead to mine so I could draw out the pollution. I'm going to try that again. Do you understand?"

Sadie's eyes roamed around the yellow-lit geode interior as if looking for threats. Seeing none she fixed Connie with stare that was wary but not outright menacing. She shoved Lars back as she pushed the handle of her spear against his chest. "Hold this."

Leaning forward, her cheek only half bandaged and still beading with scarlet droplets, she allowed Connie to step in close, their foreheads touching. Connie's gemstone flared a brilliant yellow.

_I'm not stupid! Why do they all think I'm stupid?! I know what to do, I know how to save everyone, and if they would all just stop being so frickin' stubborn for_ two seconds _then I could keep them from making more mistakes. Can't they see it?! I even have my sword now and, so help me, I will make them listen even if I have to-_

"Connie! Your cheek!"

Connie blinked, bathed in the radiance of her gemstone and shaken out of her inward fulmination by Steven's cry of alarm.

"Huh?" she asked, feeling a sharp stab of anger still: at herself for sounding dumb and at Steven for interrupting her. No, that wasn't a stab of anger. Her face actually hurt. She brought her hand up to it and then looked perplexed at the red on her finger tips.

Eventually the artificial anger diminished enough for her to connect the dots. She gave a world-weary sigh as Steven attacked her with gauze and naked concern. "I really need to practice more with that stupid power," she snarled, her voice still a little heated.

"Wait, is that my cut?" Sadie peeled away her bandage and prodded her cheek. There was a little blood, but when that was wiped away the skin beneath was unbroken and unharmed.

Lars muscled Steven aside. "You're not doing it right, Steven. You can't seal the bandage on all four sides like that or the injury can't breathe. It'll make it take longer to heal. Hang on,” and he peeled off the bandage Steven had affixed. Connie hissed slightly from the way it tugged at her (Sadie’s?) wound. “Get another gauze pad; I'll do it," Lars ordered.

Steven looked bewildered but didn't argue, instead doing his best to rummage through the first aid kit for the requested bandage. "I don't remember that in the Beach City Survival class," he said eventually, handing Lars what he'd asked for.

Connie was looking at Lars with a confused expression as well. Since when did he know stuff? Also, the smell of his AXE body spray was making her have to fight back a sneeze, something she really didn't want to do while having a wound dressed on her face.

Thank goodness Steven didn't use that stuff.

Lars rolled his eyes as he fussed over Connie's cheek. "They teach that in the same module where you learn how to stitch a wound. The one the teacher thinks is hilarious because it's called _'Suture Self.'_ You'll probably learn it in next year's class."

Connie was prodded some more while being assaulted by Lars’ aggressively manly deodorant. Eventually, mercifully, Lars stepped back. Connie reached up to rub her nose and had her hand swatted by Lars. "Don't pick at it. And don't get it dirty," he ordered. She gave him a glare that was only partially fueled by lingering negative energy.

Steven's look of concern softened, though, which helped Connie hold her tongue.

"Alright, now that no one's bleeding anymore and we're safe... kinda," observed Sadie, knocking on a force field with one knuckle, "What. The heck. Happened?!"

All eyes turned in Connie's direction.

"I don't know," she said. Lars opened his mouth, an opinion as caustic as his body spray no doubt on his lips, so Connie was quick to add, "But I have some ideas." 

She ran a hand through her hair, resisting the urge to rub her cheek, which was itchy under the bandaging. "Those little things were like the Nightmare Monster but smaller. They don't have its negativity aura, otherwise everyone would have been affected instead of just Sadie. The Nightmare Monster is, for want of a better word, fed by a far away piece of gemtech. Maybe there’s something else like that pointed here. Or maybe there’s always been some mini monsters and we, I dunno, woke them up. Regardless..."

Sadie followed her gaze to the spear, which was propped up against the multifaceted wall of the cave. "They can be destroyed."

"Yeah," said Connie, working her way to her point. "The thing is, I have no idea what those things are doing here, why they messed with our stuff, or why they gunked up the warp pad."

Lars had his arms crossed in front of him, looking like an irate scarecrow with exaggerated ears. "Who cares why they're doing anything! They're monsters! We just need to wait here until your water mom shows up and rescues us."

Steven seemed to consider the idea and then give a small nod. "Mom and Dad did make sure we told her about the trip so she could get us if something went wrong. She’s supposed to come tomorrow if we’re not back in Beach City already."

Sadie stared out through a force field. In the distance a few amorphous black shapes flitted about. "Well, this sure isn't things going right."

Connie shook her head, frizzy hair crackling slightly from the motion. "That's the problem, actually. We can't risk having those things be around here when Lapis arrives."

"Huh?" asked Lars.

"Sadie got bitten by one of those and went berserk. It's possible she could have hurt us or herself if I hadn't been able to lead her away and neutralize the effect." Not that Connie felt entirely better, a well of anger and frustration still bubbling within her like magma inside a disquieted volcano. "If someone as powerful as Lapis got bit, who knows how much damage she could do before I stopped her, or if I'd even be able to catch her at all."

Steven looked a little green. Sadie winced. Lars scowled.

Then Steven said in a hopeful voice, "At the sanctuary that one time, Lapis and Peridot didn't get scary-angry like miss Jasper did."

He was a 'the tsunami is half full' kind of guy.

Connie nodded but the resolute line of her jaw remained. "Yeah. And it's possible the same might happen here. If the effect is based on the, uh, shadow critter that bites you and not the person getting bitten, then Lapis might become depressed or frightened or insufferable." She thought back to Lapis' extreme smugness before they'd departed. "More insufferable," she clarified. "But we can't take that risk."

Lars glared at her, but the fear behind that expression was obvious. "Yeah, well, what the heck are we supposed to do about it?"

"We have to destroy them," answered Sadie for her. The blonde shook her head. "This really is like every other monster movie out there. Scary things come crawling up and if they aren't stopped in time then they'll get off the island and doom humanity or some other ticking clock nonsense. Ugh! I always thought that was such a contrived excuse to make the heroes put themselves in danger!" groaned the movie buff.

"It's- It's not _that_ contrived," objected Steven, though who precisely he was intended to stick up for was unclear. "Negative energy making people crazy; shadow monsters; I mean, this is all like stuff we've seen before, and Lapis was kinda scary at the beach party when she was shout-protecting Connie from those drill bees."

Sadie appeared unconvinced. "I'll believe that if we find a good reason for there to be bite-sized nightmares crawling around," she drawled.

"I'm not okay with this," cried Lars. "If Connie has to save the day like that stupid song Steven is always singing around the donut store then fine!" 

Steven suddenly flushed and found the walls very interesting. Admittedly, the interior of the geode _was_ quite eye-catching. 

However, Lars wasn't done. "But I didn't come here to fight emotional problems! I do enough of that at home. Without monsters! I'm going to stay here and you can come and get me when it's over."

Connie's eyebrow twitched and the only reason she didn't put her face in her hands was so she didn't accidentally make her cheek hurt worse. Instead she said in a dry tone, "Those force fields go away if I'm not here to maintain them." A small lie --they were sustained by her concentration, not her proximity-- but true enough since she'd lose focus sooner or later. "So if you want to stay here in an open cave while Sadie, Steven, and I actually solve the problem, then fine."

Lars uncrossed his arms then, seemingly at a loss for what to do with them, crossed them again. "Maybe I will."

"Fine," snapped Connie, gathering back up her stuff.

"Fine," said Lars.

"Fine!" replied Connie, the anger and indignation leaping easily to mind as she resummoned her sword. Her shoulders, however, slumped from the drain of it.

"FINE!" bellowed Lars, turning his back on the group in a huff.

A few seconds later he swiveled around to see the trio walking away, one of the force fields having winked out. He looked around for one frantic moment, snatched up his length of chain, and then went sprinting after them.

"Hey! Wait up!"

* * *

There was flickering movement around the quartet as they left the geode cave behind them. Rather than standing in tight formation, which had proved problematic at the warp pad, everyone fanned out into a loose picket, a few feet of distance between them.

More in the case of Sadie, given the reach on that spear of hers.

Walking nowhere in particular, the group walked a ways, constantly wary and on alert. After several tense minutes of nothing happened, the group stopped. "Hey, monsters, could you come out, please?" called Steven.

They did not oblige him.

Once her sword had charged sufficiently, Connie pointed the blade at one of the moving targets and fired off an arc of electricity. She missed, scorching a fern that had, a split-second earlier, been behind her target. As she tried to line up another shot, Connie had to spend a moment to gawk.

No two of the creatures were alike. Heck, no one creature was alike for more than a minute, tentacles, legs, heads, every kind of feature coming and going at random. One moment it might be quadrupedal, another monkey-like, then it’s an inky black octopus on its way to becoming something stranger still. They were all more-or-less the same size and none of them seemed to have more than two eyes, but that’s where the physical similarities ended.

Sadie made a startled cry --"Lars!"-- which caused everyone to whip around to face the carrot-haired donut clerk. Lars looked around in a panic, then looked down and saw a stygian lizard with too many hands busy at his feet. He tried to jump away but something went wrong with his movement and he ended up sprawling across the ground in an undignified tangle of limbs.

Stepping quickly, Connie moved in close, doing her best to not trod on her fellow camper. The lizard, now on its way to becoming a thick-limbed spider, looked up at her from its perch atop Lars' back and she thought she heard a frightened squeak before it tried to escape. Steven interposed, the thing slamming into the shield he wedged in the dirt. Connie took a swipe and a tendril evaporated into oily black smoke. Then the creature lashed out.

It didn't feel like a bite. It felt like something had injected scalding liquid into her, heat coursing up her arm and into her body. She staggered back, reeling as a wave of insecurity rolled over her. She felt pitiful, worthless, wretched.

Her gemstone flared to life, a black corona forming around it as the negative energy was burned off.

The creature, meanwhile, was dodging frantically while Sadie repeatedly tried to spear it, like a far more savage game of whack-a-mole. It jinked left, bounced off Steven's shield again, and then was bisected by Connie's sword, the girl having swung true despite the tears that were pooling in the corners of her eyes.

It was like cutting through a soggy loaf of bread.

The halves evaporated into more oily mist. Steven and Sadie turned around and chased off another three shadow creatures that had approached. Meanwhile, Connie rode out the 'bite' and tried to tend to Lars.

He was curled up into a ball and whimpering.

"I think he got bit too," said Connie, wiping the tears from her eyes. "I'll help him." Her gemstone had dimmed, the experience all but passed now. _I guess these little nightmares don't have as much impact as the big one._ Still, the emotional whiplash alone left her feeling a little woozy

With some work she helped haul Lars upright. He struggled at first, and said a number of unpleasant things in the process, but eventually allowed himself to be pulled into a seated position. "I'm not bleeding am I? You said it bit me. Is it poisonous?!"

Connie shushed him and tried to look past the tears and runny nose since he was being wracked by a magical affliction of the spirit. "It's going to be okay, just let me help you," she soothed, leaning in. Their foreheads touched and then...

Nothing.

"Huh?" Connie looked down at her matte stone, confused.

"Did you fix me or not?" snapped Lars, wiping his nose on a sleeve.

He hadn't been bitten. He was just being... Lars.

"You're back to normal," she ground out, turning away from the insufferable clerk to scan the perimeter.

Lars got up and promptly fell back over, his shoelaces having been tied into a thick tangle. That explained the graceless fall from earlier.

Connie tried not to smile.

She didn't try very hard, though.


	5. Chasing Shadows

Two things quickly become apparent as the hunt intensified: that most of the miniature shadow monsters tried to avoid open confrontations, and that Lars was a magnet for them.

Some were aggressive, others were sneaky, but all of them seemed to try extra hard to mess with him.

He got bitten twice, actually bitten, not just diagnosed with a case of acute Lars-ness. He got dogpiled once, five shadow creatures dropping down from the canopy all at once. When the group had stopped to rest a little, bringing out canteens and snacks, Lars yelped when he discovered gravel added in to his trail mix. He'd only set it down for a second; those shadow tricksters worked quick.

Connie felt confident that Mask Island didn't have a supply of fire salts hidden somewhere. If it did, after all, Lars would probably be coughing flames by now.

However, despite Lars being their target of choice, the others weren't immune. Sadie was mobbed once and Connie had no idea how many times she was bitten, though the blonde fought tooth and nail through the entire encounter.

Literally. The stocky camper actually bit an umbral jellyfish-monster as it tried grappling her. Connie had to purge Sadie twice after that before they could move on.

Once a nightmare creature scaled Steven and looked to be riding his head like he was a bucking bronco. Then the shiny, vermilion hair tie was wrested from his thick curls and the trickster tried to escape with its prize.

Sadie had jumped in the way and punted the monster into the air. "I got it!" she shouted like she was on a volleyball team, hefting her spear back preparing to throw, her eyes tracking the creature’s parabolic arc.

Connie yelled a warning and Steven gave a shriek as he raised his shield, eyes squeezing shut. 

With a mighty throw, Sadie chucked the spear, catching the critter out of the air and nailing it... to the force field of Steven's shield, the weapon's shaft vibrating from the impact like a diving board after a high dive.

It was obvious that Sadie, for all her strength and _considerable_ talent for violence, was no trained warrior. Connie heard as much from the Jasper that lived in her head, though the internal voice couldn't help but sound a little impressed by the display.

"Geeze, pump the breaks, Sadie Killer," admonished Lars... though everyone had to admit after the fact that it was really dang cool takedown.

As the creature dissolved into smoke, Sadie gave a nervous laugh. "Heh, uh, sorry about that, Steven. I- I got your hair tie back." Still, it took her three tries to yank the spear free from the field and release the scrunchie.

One time Lars swatted a shadow critter out of the air with his chain, sending it rocketing into Connie's face. Connie's yelp was cut short when a flash of yellow was followed by an intense wave of depression. In her way, Connie had dispatched the monster, though she preferred doing it with her sword instead of her forehead.

Fortunately, Steven was there with a comforting shoulder and a seemingly bottomless supplies of tissues while Connie sobbed it out.

Another time they saw a number of the shadow creatures scurry into the geode caves they'd explored the day prior. Lars had balked and it took all three of them to convince him to follow them inside. Just before stepping into the dim interior, Lars turned on Connie and said in a menacing voice, "But if I die in some cave, I'm coming back as a zombie to torment you!"

 _He would too,_ Connie grumped inwardly.

It was a messy fiasco and they only managed to dispatch one monster. If it weren't for Steven's scouter, the teen helping coordinate things in the one voice that wouldn't echo confusingly in the enclosed space, the whole encounter would probably have been fruitless.

Later Steven had an impressive double take-down, diving off a leaning coconut tree to splatter a pair across his shield. While scraping some of the residue off the buckler --the force field could always be deactivated and resummoned and thus needed no cleaning-- he observed, “Is it just me or do the monsters look like they’re getting smaller?”

It was hard to tell, given how their forms changed, but the consensus among the group was, yes, they didn’t seem as big as they’d been that morning.

This line of discussion, however, was brought to a strange and gruesome conclusion when a shadow creature that Connie had only winged --a third of the bulk of a pink-eyed cephalopod rendered into oily smoke-- was pounced on by an orange-eyed thing like a cross between a flying squirrel and a cobra.

The two tumbled, a keening noise piercing the air, and maybe fifteen violent seconds later there was only one noticeably larger cobra-squirrel. It hissed at them and flickered into the underbrush.

“That was fu- ow!” said Lars, glaring at Sadie for elbowing him. He shook his head then said instead, “That was messed up.”

Connie and Steven could only nod their heads in agreement.

The group made two more attempts to return to the warp pad. The first time, they were driven off by the relentless defense the shadow creatures committed to. Sadie, Lars, and Steven all got bitten in the process.

For whatever reason, they _really_ didn't want the campers to escape.

The second attempt happened as dusk neared, the group growing desperate with time running low. It involved Connie sealing the four of them and the warp pad inside a force field box. While Connie was reeling from five extent fields, Sadie, Steven, and Lars all tried to remove the gunk with an assortment camping equipment put to the purposes of cutting and scraping. 

This threw the shadow critters into a frenzy and they learned three very important lessons: shadow gunk is extremely tenacious and slow to be removed, whatever the shadow things were made out of could squeeze through very tiny cracks if needed, and Connie's force field box wasn't perfectly tight.

The ensuing melee marked a low point for the aspiring monster hunters, a slapstick affair where three humans and one field-drunk hybrid fought in a yellow closet against a mass of incensed, literal ankle-biters. By the time the first field dissolved and they could make their escape, a weeping and apologetic Steven was running with an incoherent Connie in a bridal carry. Sadie had Lars thrown over one shoulder, the girl trampling over anything that tried to get in her way while the guy hurled expletives at monsters and allies alike.

The group limped back, literally in Steven's case since he'd rolled an ankle during the flight, to the geode cave and Connie sealed them back in so they could regroup and rest.

* * *

Negative energy was purged. Bruises were tended to. Food and water was doled out (Lars checking between bites that there wasn't some unpleasant surprise snuck into his) and everyone prepared for the night.

"We'll have to take shifts on watch." Connie sounded as exhausted as they all looked.

"Wow! It's just like _Lutes and Loot_ ," managed Steven, the teen somehow finding the energy for enthusiasm. He scooched over a little closer to Connie and said, "I can stay up with you for the first watch while Lars and Sadie get some rest. It'll be just like Roland and Carella back at the acid cave, keeping the base base secure."

Sadie paused in unrolling her sleeping bag. "Base base?"

"It was made out of stuff to neutralize any acid monsters that tried to sneak up on us," explained Steven. With a smirk he added, "Jeff's wizard has such a low dexterity, he even failed his pH balance check."

Sadie rolled her eyes and crawled into the sleeping bag.

Connie chuckled weakly. "That joke was completely _alkaline_ , Universe."

Lars groaned from inside the sleeping bag he'd turned into an angsty sleep burrito.

"No need to get _salty_ ," Steven quipped.

Sadie groaned as well.

"You're really _litmus testing_ me now," Connie said around a grin.

The two sleepers groaned their disapproval.

"I feel like this could _dissolve_ into violence if-" but Steven's sentence was cut off by Sadie and Lars groaning him into silence like a pair of zombie hecklers. 

Connie and Steven took the hint and relented.

The two of them fashioned a kind of futon couch out of their own sleeping mats and a stack of camping gear. They talked quietly during the shift, all while trying to remain vigilant. It was nice, though for some reason Connie's force fields had to be replaced constantly, some of them seeming to vanish even sooner than that power's minimum duration should have allowed.

At some point Steven's head found Connie's shoulder. A little later the flow of conversation became a trickle, and then became just the sound of Steven's even breathing. Connie took a surreptitious huff of Steven's hair, still floral-scented despite the day's exertions. She smiled softly and tried to be still so her friend could get his rest.

Then she gave an annoyed sigh and resummoned all three fields.

* * *

Sadie didn't snore, but she did breathe so heavily it made the geode cave sound like the inside of a bellows.

Mr. Universe had once described Sadie's mom as unstoppable, the dedicated mail carrier making her route on foot despite the blizzard that day. After trekking the width of the island over a series of skirmishes, Connie was inclined to think Sadie was every bit the juggernaut her mom was.

The cost of that was apparently sleeping so soundly that not even Lars poking her with the butt of her spear would wake her.

Despite being bone-tired, Connie was reluctant to wake up Steven as a replacement. Her friend (now ensconced in a sleeping bag on the floor) was every bit as fatigued and, well, it just seemed _mean_ to rouse him so he could take a shift with Lars.

She was probably projecting. Okay, she was _definitely_ projecting, but the thought of the same happening to her was simply too galling for her to inflict on her best friend. Besides, she was the only one who could sustain the force fields. There'd been two probes made by the shadow tricksters thus far, so her concern wasn't baseless.

So Connie scooched over and, following an expression of visible reluctance, said, "Let her sleep, Lars. I'll take her place."

Lars gave her a bemused and rather displeased look -- _I know you'd rather stay up with the girl who inexplicably likes you. I feel the same way,_ she mentally shouted at him-- but set the spear aside and came over to sit opposite her.

Connie cast about for something to say until her itchy, bandaged cheek made itself felt. "Thanks for bandaging my wound earlier." She started to reach up and a glare from Lars stayed her hand. She wouldn't have scratched it, probably, but it usually took her a bit to veto the impulse.

Lars grunted. Then he said, "We should re-dress the wound."

A few uncomfortable minutes later and Connie had fresh cotton over the sliced cheek she'd accidentally imported from Sadie. She really needed to practice with that power more. If Sadie had been grievously injured, she could have-

Connie's imagination and ethical centers blew a fuse and performed an emergency shutdown.

"Thanks," she stammered out, still a little stunned.

For a time after there was silence. At some point Lars pulled out his phone to confirm that, yep, he still didn't have any signal in this cave on a remote, magical island. Then put it away with an angsty sigh.

He shook his head. "I shouldn't have agreed to come on this stupid trip," he muttered.

Connie had been frowning without realizing it, but at that the expression blossomed into a full glower. "Why did you?" she asked, the tone being just shy of an accusation.

"Because town was lamer than usual with the power out. Because Mom and Dad wouldn't get off my back about stuff." He looked over at the blonde figure droning in the corner like an industrial fan. "Because if Sadie had to spend another day with that psycho mom of hers, she'd have gone nuts."

Connie blinked and not just from exhaustion. Curious but not convinced, she probed a little further. "You weren't the tiniest bit interested in going to an island paradise for its own sake?"

Lars' eye roll could be felt. "As if. This place blows."

She wanted to object more stridently, but, well, they _were_ barricaded inside a cave while inexplicable and amorphous monstrosities prowled outside.

"Yeah, but before the monsters showed up, it was fun." She turned to look his way. "Right?"

He scoffed. "If I wanted a real vacation it wouldn't be with a weirdo like you or your lame sidekick."

Sadie's name was conspicuously absent from that list, but at that moment Connie was too incensed to notice.

"He's not my sidekick!" she said as loudly as she dared. He wasn't; Steven, Jasper, and she had had this whole _thing_ back in June to set the record straight. Steven told her after the fact that there'd even been a singing. "And why do you always have to be so unpleasant?!"

Lars' glare met her own. "Why wouldn't I? Bad enough this whole lame town is a big joke, bad enough I have to dodge drill bees and mole monsters every other day, but having you and your stupid moms down the beach means I have to put up with it twice as much!" He pointed at Steven. "He volunteers for that crap. Fine, that's on him. But I'm working retail! I didn't volunteer for shit!"

Lars gestured toward Sadie and said, "I'm only-" before thinking better of it, shutting his mouth, and crossing his arms defensively.

_I guess Beach City isn’t for everyone, or even everyone who lives in Beach City._

Connie let the vulgarity slide. Instead, she looked over at Sadie and then back at Lars. "Are you really working at the Big Donut for Sadie's sake?" Without intending to, and with skepticism-laced admiration in her voice, she added, "That's actually really nice."

Lars' face ran through an impressive range of emotions in a short span of time. It settled on a scowl of pure vinegar. "Mind your own business!" he snapped.

Connie was exasperated and made no effort to hide it. "I just- I don't _get_ you. I can understand seven thousand-year-old alien stasis victims better than I can you. And it's not like I seek out your company." _Far from it._ "But since we keep having to deal with each other..." She trailed off, seeing if Lars would grasp the other end of the short and gnarled olive branch she was extending him.

"All you need to _get_ is _lost,"_ he snapped before turning and stalking away as far as their shelter allowed.

A corner of Connie's mind even acknowledged it as a decently snappy comeback, but the rest of her wished her force fields were malfunctioning like earlier so she could throw him out to the mini nightmare monsters.

And so it was that Connie sat there, glowering and crackling with energy, alternating between being tired of Lars' attitude and just plain being tired.

* * *

"Hey. Wake up. Your force field is gone again."

Lars prodded Connie awake, her angry dreams blending in well enough with her none-too-happy waking that the two were hard to separate. Blinking over a scowl, Connie willed a field into place, though her eyes had been unfocused and it showed: a gap was visible between the new field and the others.

Lars tsked at her and paced their cave like the world's most pathetically-maned lion.

What felt like an eyeblink later, Connie was being prodded again. If it weren't for the faint hints of dawn visible outside she'd swear no time had passed at all.

"Another field's out. Stay awake," Lars snapped.

Connie's ability to think charitably of others wasn't open at this time of night. She glared at Lars for several long seconds before summoning another field.

In the time between breaths Connie found herself being poked again. All three fields were visible so Connie turned to face Lars with a truly irate expression. _And stop shining your flashlight in my face!_ she was about to say when she realized the glow was coming from her chest instead.

"What the heck is that thing doing?!" Lars squeaked from as far from her as he could get and still prod her with the butt of Sadie's spear.

Connie looked down, eyes crossing as she tried to see. It was hard to tell, she really needed a mirror for this sort of thing, but she thought she saw whirls of black beneath the surface of her gemstone, like it was an observation window in a submarine and something dark had swam past.

The glow grew brighter and then-

Connie had been witness to many strange things in her life. Missions and training and just living with the gems had exposed her to lots of odd and even frightening sights. But seeing a miniature Connie made of oily shadows climb up out of her gemstone, drop to the floor, and then stare up at her with a single, yellow eye...

Connie screamed. Lars yelled. Steven had somehow turned around inside his sleeping bag while he slept so, like a startled caterpillar, the foot of his sleeping bag reared up with a muffled noise of surprise. Sadie woke up flailing, seized the first object at hand, and threatened bleary-eyed violence to the rest of the cave with one of Steven's pink flip-flops.

The shadow Connie, its (her?) legs already starting to lose definition and meld into a black column, snatched up a durable plastic stake used to anchor the corner of a tent. It flicker-moved over and wailed on Lars' calf, striking him five or six times before darting over, squeezing through a gap between a field and the cave opening, and joining the others in the darkness.

By the time Connie lost sight of it, it looked more like something that had crawled up from a benthic abyss than a miniature Connie.

After some impressive wriggling, Steven managed to navigate his way out of the sleeping bag. "What happened?!"

Connie was silent, her eyes falling back to where the shadow creature _that she'd conjured_ had dropped the tent stake in its escape. She felt nothing but shock, though a roiling mass of fear, frustration, and self-recrimination was making steady progress toward the surface of her emotional landscape.

Lars stared at Connie like, well, like she'd summoned a tiny monster to whack him on the shin. Then, voice rising to a shriek, shouted, "THIS WAS YOUR FAULT THE WHOLE TIME!" He paced hurriedly but never let Connie out of his peripheral vision in case she'd summon more umbral Lilliputians to assault him. "The power going out; the whole trip to the island; the monsters; trapping us here. It was all you!"

By this point Sadie had staggered to her feet --still wearing her rumpled, stained, and slightly battle-damaged clothes from the day before-- and retrieved her spear. Lars crouched behind her and pointed at Connie accusingly. "She summoned the monsters!"

Sadie blinked, looking between Connie and the flickering shapes outside. "Did you?" she asked, still a little slow despite the adrenaline-fueled wake-up.

Connie's mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air. She just couldn't stop seeing that shadow Connie crawl out of her gemstone and, however inconsequentially, attack Lars. Finding words beyond her just then, Connie closed her mouth and nodded in a halting fashion.

Steven walked over and looked at her with concerned eyes. "Really?"

Connie's voice came out a little weak at first but she managed, "Something to add to the power diary when we get home." She finished with a weak half-smile.

Steven pulled her into a hug and Connie clung to him like a life shipwrecked sailor to a piece of flotsam. Sadie, meanwhile, held a thoughtful expression as she stared through the fields.

"They're smaller," she said to herself.

"What?" asked Lars. 

Sadie ignored the question in favor of her own. "How many monsters did she make?" the blonde asked.

"All of them!" barked Lars.

"I mean tonight. Collectively, you and Steven were awake the whole time, right?"

Steven leaned back from the hug long enough to meet Lars' face, the two seeing confirmation in the other's eyes. "Yeah," said Steven.

"Then-" Sadie ran a hand through her unkempt hair. "Okay, then those things must be, like, leftovers from when Connie purged the big shadow monster in the quarry two days ago. But they don't have anything feeding them like the big one does, so they're getting smaller and smaller. They're having to eat each other to survive."

"The heck does that-" started Lars but Sadie silenced him with a gesture.

"Just a third act realization." She stopped. "Ugh, and that makes me the exposition character." She turned to Connie and gave her a pleading look. "Connie, if you're going to keep turning my life into a horror movie, you've got to get me a better part."

No one, Connie included, seemed to know what to say in response to that.

Fortunately, Sadie didn't wait for them to continue. "So those things are made out of concentrated bad feelings. Connie loaded up with the stuff at the quarry, came here, but instead of her gemstone digesting it or whatever it does, she pukes a bunch of them up." She pauses. "In her sleep, I guess."

 _Lars is so awful, he even makes my powers vomit,_ thought Connie. 

Connie nodded. "I was sort of sleeping when it happened just now." Then, climbing aboard Sadie's train of thought, she added, "Only, Lars woke me up while it was still coming out so I saw it happen this time." 

She shuddered at the memory and held Steven a little tighter.

"Right, so we've been getting bitten by them and Connie's been transferring the shadow stuff into herself all day, so this must be the, uh, scraps all mashed together into one last monster." Sadie punctuated her point by thumping the butt of her spear against the ground.

"Fine, but what does that mean for us?" insisted Lars.

"It means, all those things out there are going to die out on their own when they starve or run out of- of-" Sadie paused, trying to think of a word.

"Uh, nightmare fuel?" offered Steven hesitantly.

Sadie snapped her fingers. "Yes! Perfect! And it means that Connie isn't going to keep making more monsters so long as she doesn't drink anymore nightmare fuel."

"But that Lapis lady is still going to get here before that happens," observed Lars dryly.

"Yeah, it doesn't really change what we're going to do," agreed Sadie. "We still need to take out the rest of them so Lapis doesn't get bit, but at least it means this whole monster thing isn't as contrived as I thought it was." She turned to face Steven and Connie, saying, "I take that complaint back, by the way, though, Connie, seriously, a better role next time."

Unsure what else to do, Connie nodded.

With that everyone started getting ready for the day, dawn just breaking outside. Connie ignored the low-level pressure of Lars' --fairly justified, she had to admit-- angry glare and got herself prepared. She'd gotten basically no rest since her princess sleep the day before, but she was going to see this through, no matter what.

Also, focusing on the task at hand meant she wouldn't be able to ponder _other_ things. Things like what this power could mean about the Nightmare Monster's origins. Or about the monster’s meaning in relation to her mom. Or about the other freaky stuff she might see her gemstone do.

Yeah, fighting monsters sounded way better than all that.

_And here I thought Sadie was the miniature Jasper of the group._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art was drawn by BurdenKing.
> 
> Boy, this update has been an obstinate one to create. I had to scrap an earlier version (for good reason, believe you me) and then the story ballooned in the process even after I streamlined most of the set pieces into an action montage. Anyway, I intended to have this episode all wrapped up today, but it just wasn't happening. The remainder of the fic feels short enough that I might be able to put it out, say, Friday. That said, I have a proven track record of being terrible at estimating the final word count for an update, so it may end up taking until next Wednesday.
> 
> Whether Wednesday, the 10th, is an omake day or me posting the rest of this episode has yet to be seen. Regardless, Episode 28 will pick up on October 17th, two Wednesdays from now. Exciting things are coming and I don't want to keep y'all waiting. :)
> 
> Anyway, I'm very excited to say that Cyberwraith9 has written another outstanding omake, a Lapis-centric one to complete the collection alongside the [Jasper one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673391/chapters/23849106) and the [Peridot one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673391/chapters/26942838).
> 
> *) [My Own Worst Enemy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673391/chapters/37793498) by [Cyberwraith9](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyberwraith9/pseuds/Cyberwraith9) \- "Connie is looking forward to a week all to herself, but finds herself stuck with a whole lot of Lapis instead! And when Beach City starts feeling especially blue, it's going to take a lot of patience and even more luck to survive the flood."
> 
> * * *
> 
> If you have a Connie Swap story burning in your soul that you want to see in our official, curated Omake collection, drop us a comment either in the Omake fic or here in the main fic and we'll get in touch.
> 
> Connie Swap has an official Discord for the fans. [Come check it out.](https://discord.gg/RQMDdhr)
> 
> As usual, we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments and your asks at the [Connie Swap Tumblr](http://connieswap.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading!


	6. There Can Be Only One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After you finish reading this chapter, there is a related omake story you might want to check out:  
> [Alternate Episode - Bonnie Lockdrew/Be Wherever You Aren't](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10673391/chapters/37993967) by [br42](http://archiveofourown.org/users/br42/pseuds/br42) \- An outline of the very different story _Episode 15: Bonnie Lockdrew and the Cries of Hallowed Halls_ almost became.

Tired, frustrated, but collectively resolved to get this over with, Sadie, Lars, Steven, and Connie formed up, ready for one final hunt. It was a race against the clock to ensure no more monsters remained by the time Lapis arrived to check on the overdue campers.

After a brief pause Connie managed to 'forget' about one of the force fields barricading the geode cave long enough for it to dissolve.

Everyone startled in surprise when two shadow monsters immediately sprinted inside the cave as fast as their wispy forms could take them.

Steven tried to catch one with his shield but it flicker-sprinted around and through his feet. Unable to bring her sword to bear in time, Connie fired off a bolt of electricity from her finger tip but the shot went wide. Lars and Sadie were both yelling and stomping about while the tricksters moved with frantic abandon. By this point they were both pretty small, the size of a large squirrel perhaps, which made them all the harder to hit.

Lars tried to crush one with a heavy pound of his chain, missed, and staved in a canteen someone had dropped, water exploding out in a surprise splash. Sadie was chasing the other, spear low and stabbing, when it ran up Steven and the blonde bowled the boy over, fortunately without impaling anyone in the process.

This was getting way out of hand.

"STOP!" shouted Connie. Even with only the one hearing aid she could tell her voice was painfully loud in the enclosed space.

Everyone stopped. _Everyone,_ including the shadow creature that was inches away from entering a sleeping bag and the other that had climbed as far as Steven's shoulder and now looked like a particularly frightful shoulder parrot.

A bolt of electricity blasted the shadow off of Steven, coming within inches of Sadie as the blonde was still scrambling free of the boy. Connie followed it up with a second arc, her aim still true, which staggered the monster long enough for her to close the distance and bisect it with her blade.

She helped Steven to his feet.

Lars, meanwhile, was holding closed the top of a writhing sleeping bag, the shadow realizing too late there wasn't a second way out of its hiding spot. Yelling, Lars swung the bag against the geode wall once, twice, three times, then dropped it to the floor and stomped until the bag was still.

Sadie walked over, picked up the sleeping bag, cautiously peeked inside, then made a sickened face. She gave Steven an apologetic look. "Uh, Lars and I can get your dad a new sleeping bag," she offered. There was a dark and oily stain beginning to seep through one corner.

Lars started to object but Steven waved them off. "No, it's fine. Dad has a sponsorship with a company that makes sleeping bags so he's got, like, a million of them."

Sadie cocked her head to the side, perplexed. "Why would a company like that want to sponsor Mr. Universe? Are they space-themed?" She looked at the (oozing) sleeping bag for signs of rocket ships or stars.

Steven shook his head. "No, but in this interview one time Dad said how he used to live out of the back of his van and he had this really comfy sleeping bag he used and then some of his fans started buying them and-"

"Hey!" interrupted Lars. "Not that this isn't interesting --because it's not-- but did we forget about the part where Connie yelled at the monsters and they listened to her?"

Everyone looked at Connie, Sadie dropping the sleeping bag with a muffled squish.

Connie raised her hands in a helpless gesture. "Hey, I'm as surprised as you guys. Besides, I shouted lots of things yesterday and we never saw the creatures obey. It's not like they formed up into formation when I was trying to get our picket line in order."

"Maybe they only understand simple commands?" offered Sadie, her voice lilting up into a question as she said it.

"Hey! What if you wore my scouter and told them all to go to sleep or something?!" enthused Steven, already reaching for the device over his ear.

Connie stopped him with a gesture. "No! I'd probably fry it like my old hearing aids if I wore it."

"Oh, right." Steven caressed the device protectively. Since his birthday her friend had grown very fond of the bit of gemtech/unintentional Dragon Ball Z homage.

Sadie was still looking thoughtful. "Why did those two run in here anyway? We've always had to chase those things down or bait them into a fight. They didn’t even try to attack Lars, and he was wide open for most of that fight.”

“Yeah! Wait, what?!” he squawked.

A high-pitched keening pierced the air. Everyone hustled through the entryway, the force fields long since forgotten and vanished, and saw...

A single wolf-sized shadow bowled into a trio of squirrel-sized ones, consuming one in an instant while the others bolted. A tendril lashed out, ensnaring and absorbing one of the fleeing pair. Then the monster bounded after its prey, relentless, bulling the underbrush aside. The pursued shadow started to escape up a tree but the monster opened its 'mouth' and a whip-like tongue grabbed and consumed it.

The victorious monster seemed to swell, growing taller, broader. Then a piercing yellow eye glared at the group by the cave. Sadie drew in a sharp breath and Lars flinched back a pace.

The alpha shadow glared at them for a second longer and then was gone, flickering away into the foliage.

"Well..." said Steven slowly. "At least we only have one shadow thing to catch now."

The others completely failed to jump for joy at this observation.

* * *

"Stop!"

The shadow monster, which was probably fifty yards distant, stopped and faced Connie. Or rather, it stopped and then was suddenly looking at Connie since it didn't so much move as appear in its new position. When she raised her sword to try and line up a shot, though, it went back to flicker-moving, keeping at least a hundred feet between it and her at all times.

Connie rubbed her throat feeling a little hoarse. They'd been following the remaining shadow monster for close to an hour now. Phrases like 'Come over here!' or 'Surrender!' were ignored. 'Stop', 'Stay', even 'Sit' all got a response but as soon as Connie got too close or did something threatening, the creature would just go back to what it was doing. Even sending Steven or the others after it while Connie stayed resulted in the same behavior.

They'd even tried leaving Lars out as 'bait' --something he had protested against vocally and at length-- but while it would stalk closer, all their attempts at catching it in a trap had failed.

 _Maybe they get smarter when they get bigger. Or maybe this one is just extra cautious,_ thought Connie. She had noticed different 'personalities' among the tricksters during their hunt yesterday.

Connie took a swig from her canteen, as much for her throat as for her thirst. Shoulders slumping a little, and definitely feeling the fatigue from her all-nighter, she said, "I don't think this is going to work."

Lars was openly distraught, Sadie's mouth was a line, but Steven stepped closer and the implicit support brought the hint of a smile to Connie’s face.

"It's back to the warp pad then," said the blonde, more a statement than a question.

Connie's shoulders slumped a little further. "Yeah. It's the only other thing we've been able to do to force and engagement with those things. And Steven is right, there being just the one will make this fight more straightforward than before."

Before had been a disaster. All the befores, in fact. Each time they'd attempted to retake the warp pad they'd been forced to run away: bitten, bruised, defeated. By sheer Pavlovian conditioning all of them had come to equate 'going to the warp pad' with 'really bad things happen.'

Steven reached out and, with one finger, wiggled Connie's nose: their code for 'It’ll be okay.' Sadie gave a resigned sigh and adjusted the grip on her spear. Lars, to his credit, kept his running commentary on how stupid this all was and how much he hated everything to a low mutter.

If Connie kept Lars to the same side as her bad ear, she couldn't even hear him. It was nice.

* * *

"Do you think the big ones eat the little ones because they're hungry or because they're like cats and just have to pounce on small stuff moving by?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, or maybe it's a big competition. Like in _Highlander_. 'There can be only one!' Think it's that?"

"I don't know."

"And why do they care so much about the warp pad? Were they designed to be ancient warp pad guardians? Or- Or they thought they'd get bored without people around?"

"Steven, I..." Connie stopped and took a weary breath. They were nearly to the warp pad and everyone was anxious. Steven got helpful when he was anxious, or would look to someone for direction. And that someone was apparently Connie.

She took another breath, taking the time to sort through her jangled emotions. She wasn't about to snarl at Steven, after all. That would be just... _wrong._

"Steven, shut up," snapped Lars. "No one knows why monsters do stuff. They're monsters."

Connie's sword crackled as she wheeled around, eyes vengeful. Snarling at Lars? Not wrong. That she could do.

Sadie jumped between the pair. "Hey! Hey, come on. Save it for the third act finale, you two." She pointed toward the distance with a tilt of her head.

Swiveling around, Connie saw the wolf-sized, yellow-eyed shadow monster. It was about a hundred feet off and watching them closely. She nodded. "Right. Sorry.” A final calming breath and she worked to get her tired thoughts into order. They needed a plan. 

Connie drew herself up a little straighter, looking just a little bit more commanding as she did. “Steven, I want you in the middle and a little back. Slow it down if you can. I'll stand on the right flank,” she explained, pacing the area and pointing as she explained. “Sadie, you take the left flank; I'm expecting it to try and get between you and Steven since the others have mostly tried to stay away from me. Just make sure there's no one in your line of... fire? In your line of stabbing."

The blonde gave an embarrassed smile and she and Steven got into position.

"What about me?"

Connie tossed a tent stake --possibly the same one that had been used by the yellow-eyed shadow to hammer on his shins-- to Lars. "You're going to try and scrape off the gunk to force the engagement."

Lars had objections to this but Connie ignored them and got into position. She only had room for two emotions towards Lars just then and Sadie's intervention had ensured 'wrath' stayed shelved in favor of weary indifference.

The shadow monster flicker-ran forward. It was currently in a four-legged form and a little over three feet tall at the shoulder, with a quintet of black tendrils extending out of its 'back.' Its head and tail looked more or less indistinguishable except for the yellow-eye set in former. 

Without conscious thought Connie assumed a defensive stance, reciting in her head (in a voice that sounded suspiciously like Jasper’s) the mantras of her training. The signs of exhaustion mostly vanishing as she braced for combat. There was a frisson of excitement and Connie's sword glowed just a little bit brighter, her mouth curling up at one corner.

It was, after all, a Quartz that peeked out above the neck of her shirt.

As predicted, the monster tried to break their picket by going between Sadie and Steven. Sadie lunged forward, stabbing without risking Steven because Connie had made a point of positioning him back a little. That it added depth to their 'horn' formation was a plus. The spear strike missed but it did force the shadow into position where Steven could better block it. He received the charge with practiced (and dampener-enhanced) ease.

Connie moved in, hoping to trap the foe between three combatants. She rejected the idea of shouting 'Stop!' at the creature because it'd probably confuse her allies as well. Something she should have arranged with them in advance, though it was too late now. Instead she fired an arc of electricity at nearly point-blank range. The monster flickered out of the way --she'd noticed the tricksters seemed to have a knack for evading her lightning-- while Connie slashed where she thought the foe would dodge.

She was rewarded with the feeling of hacking into an overripe pumpkin, part of the 'tail' cleaving off into an oily cloud of black. Connie wore a feral grin of satisfaction.

Sadie lashed out with her spear again and Connie had to hop back a little. The strike would have missed her regardless, but it was certainly too close for comfort, the thought making her cheek itch under its bandage.

The monster, however, vanished, reappearing about six feet directly above where it had just been standing. _Whoa, that's new,_ was all Connie was able to think before the thing dropped back down, landing atop Sadie.

The blonde was bowled flat with a brief 'GAH!' the shadow standing atop her, tendrils flitting about aggressively. Whether she'd also been bitten was unclear. Behind them Lars shouted something, probably worried about Sadie, but Connie had relegated Lars to background noise even before the fight started.

Steven resized his field into a tall rectangle and swung it like a baseball bat. He was trying to get the monster off of Sadie and he succeeded... by having it flicker over to within inches of Connie instead.

She certainly hadn't expected _that_.

Having gotten inside her guard, Connie improvised. In an awkward and spontaneous move, she attempted to essentially headbutt the monster, hoping she could purge it if it came in contact with her forehead. It flickered just far enough out of the way that Connie had nothing to collide with and nearly faceplanted into Steven's outstretched field.

Not one of her better ideas, in retrospect.

Steven resized his shield in time to prevent Connie from giving herself a concussion. As Connie thrust her arms out to catch herself, Steven screamed suddenly and dropped to one knee. 

The monster was noticeably smaller as it advanced on Lars.

"Steven!" 

Connie tried to help Steven to his feet but her friend jerked away from her, his face one of purest frustration. "Get away from me!" he shouted.

Sadie, meanwhile, was having what amounted to a tantrum while still splayed out across the grass.

Lars yelled and threw the tent stake at the monster. That was exactly as effective as you'd expect. However, to Lars' credit, he used the split-second distraction to good effect: he was up and sprinting away, long legs covering ground quickly while perfectly executing the zigzag 'serpentine' run he'd been taught in school.

Between that and the bandaging, Connie suspected that Lars had earned good grades in at least one class.

Leaving Lars to his scream-filled evasive maneuvering, Connie tried to get in close enough to help Steven. There was just no way she could tackle this opponent by herself... or with Lars' help, which amounted to the same. However, Steven was having none of it, grunting and thrashing like an angry three-year-old trying to avoid being dragged off the playground by its parent.

"Stop it you- Jerk!" he shouted, needing a moment to find the right epithet for the occasion.

Between the sleep exhaustion, the prospect of yet another failure, the very real risk of Lapis showing up and getting dosed with concentrated frustration, and the deeply unsettling experience of being shouted at by an angry Steven, Connie snapped. A little, but enough.

Behind her, Lars shrieked.

"Arrgh!" she roared, staggering back from Steven. _Stupid new power! Stupid Lars! Stupid island! Stupid gems! Stupid- Stupid world!_

Sword crackling, Connie swiveled around and- Lars' shriek reached a new level, an unnerving one that didn't sound at all like it was coming from a human throat. No, it sounded more like... a howl?

A swirling vortex appeared nearby and Wolf rocketed out, the yellow canine hitting the grass going so fast that he left a six foot long furrow before finally skidding to a stop.

"OHFUCKNO!" Lars, who had been sprinting back towards Connie, the shadow monster in hot pursuit, somehow managed a ninety degree turn without slowing down and was running screaming away from wolf and shadow alike.

Lars was familiar with Wolf as everyone in Beach City was at this point, but in the heat of the moment his Beach City Survival training had taken over, propelling him away from all things potentially monstrous.

The shadow halted as only something that moved via short range teleportation could. The single yellow eye went wide and then it bolted, fleeing like the squirrel-sized shadows it had been chasing down that morning. Wolf gave an excited bark and sprang after its quarry.

Connie, unsure what exactly was happening but doing her best to hold her objective in mind, ran over and began scraping at the warp pad with her sword.

The effect was immediate. The shadow staggered and then was suddenly racing back towards Connie, reversing directions on a dime because apparently if you were eldritch enough, inertia was only a suggestion.

Wolf gave another excited bark but didn't attempt to continue the chase or even change directions. Instead, he barreled forward, away from Connie, the shadow, and the warp pad. If anything, it looked like he was speeding up.

The shadow monster was coming at her fast.

At about the time Connie’s expression had shifted from confused to concerned to alarmed, Wolf howled, practically flying into the vortex that appeared before him. Another vortex appeared only a few feet away from her, placed perfectly so that when Wolf rocketed out, he crashed into the shadow beast like a giant, yellow cruise missile.

Wolf and monster tumbled, rolling across probably twenty feet of grass and undergrowth. When the two stopped, Wolf raised his head, a mouthful of roiling shadow disappearing down his gullet. As he brought his head down again and happily gobbled up his prey, his tail wagged contentedly, thumping against a nearby geode.

Connie stared in stunned silence, a silence that was eventually broken with her shouting, "Why don't you tell me you can do these things you do?!"

_Wolf eats shadows?! And he has warp pad gunk all over the inside of his pocket dimension. And I make shadow tricksters. And the tricksters are basically little versions of the Nightmare Monster. And the Nightmare Monster is fueled by Mom's sanctuary. And- And- ___

"What the heck does all of that mean?!"

Connie flopped down beside the warp pad. She started to bury her face in her hands but flinched when she put pressure on her cheek. She settled for dazedly staring at the magic sword draped across her lap.

Meal complete, Wolf padded happily over. Lowering his head, he started to lick at the warp pad, his large tongue lapping up the black gunk like it was spilled gravy.

"Of course! Why not!" Connie gave a harsh laugh that had a hysterical edge to it. "What, are you going to lick Steven and Sadie better too?"

Wolf looked at her quizzically, head cocked to the side, before he panted a little and padded over toward her afflicted friends.

"Gah! No, Wolf, stop!" cried Steven as he received the mother of all slobbery dog kisses. A few seconds later the protests became giggles. "Wooolf!" he cried between peals of laughter. "Wait. Stop. Stop! I'm gonna pee!"

That accomplished, Wolf turned his attention to Sadie. The blonde put up more of a fight but was ultimately subdued, and shellacked, by Wolf licks.

Steven, using his seemingly inexhaustible supply of tissues to mop his face, neck, and arms, came and sat down beside Connie. "Hey Connie," he said casually but utterly perplexed.

"Hey," answered the girl, having passed through confusion into a kind of relaxed bewilderment, a bystander who could only sit and see just how much crazier things were going to become.

"Did Wolf cure my bad vibes with magical doggy kisses?"

"Looks that way."

"Huh." Steven looked around. "Where'd the monster go?"

"Wolf ate it."

_"He can do that?!"_

Connie gave Steven a helpless, 'I just work here' look and shrugged.

"Is- Is Lars okay?"

"Think so. He ran off thattaway screaming. He'll come back. Eventually. Probably."

Wolf padded back over, snuffled all over Connie's gemstone and forehead, then bent down and began licking the shadow residue off of Steven's shield.

Steven glanced between Wolf, the shield, and Connie. "Uh... This is weird, right?"

"Extremely." Then Connie buried her face in Steven's chest and made a noise that was as much laugh as it was sob.

* * *

Even for an animal as large as Wolf, licking the warp pad clean was going to be a long, slow process. So through the medium of puppy dog eyes and insistent nuzzles, Wolf coaxed Connie onto his back, with Steven sitting just behind her.

Steven started to say, "What is he-"

But Connie threw her arms in the air and said in a raised voice, "I don't understand anything anymore!"

Then they were hurtling forward, riding wolfback straight into a swirling vortex.

Lights and colors blurred past as Connie and Steven screamed, Steven's arms wrapped around Connie, the boy holding on for dear life.

They emerged to a spray of sand and a smell of brine, the temple towering overhead. It had been around noon back on the island but it was nearing evening here in Beach City.

Connie and Steven disembarked shakily. Wolf barked open another vortex and vanished.

The two stood there in stunned silence. Eventually Steven turned toward the Beach House stairs, saying, "We should go tell Lapis we're back."

A little later he came back, took Connie by the hand, and gently led her back toward her home. The girl went unresistingly.

By the time they had reached the porch, Wolf, Lars, and Sadie appeared, the latter two shrieking like they were riding a rollercoaster.

Wolf shook them off and then vanished yet again, presumably to clean up all the tasty shadow gunk someone had accidentally spilled over that warp pad.

"Oh, hey Pinkie. Hey Con-con," said Lapis, splayed out across the couch and looking up from her manga. "I was just about to go check on you guys."

* * *

It was hot. The Beach House was messy. The power was out, the phone was broken, the fridge was probably a biohazard.

Connie, leaving the bathroom after having changed into clean clothes and splashed water in her face, paused long enough to try and will open the door to Peridot's room.

It stayed closed, locked.

She was tired, in body and mind. Lapis kept asking questions and even when she had answers, Connie just couldn't find the energy to give them. Instead she muttered something about walking Steven home and trudged back out the door.

A few seconds later Steven said a hurried farewell to the gem and then jogged after her.

The two walked wordlessly up the beach, past the Big Donut, then north up Thayer Street. Connie shuffled to a stop in front of her dad's apartment complex. She slumped into Steven, offering him a boneless hug goodbye and mumbled something about calling him tomorrow. She was most of the way up the stairs to her dad's second-floor apartment when she belatedly remembered that neither of them had a working phone.

The door was open to her dad's place, as were all the windows, with only the screen door closed to keep out the bugs. Connie plodded forward and rapped on the screen.

Her dad and Priyanka were seated around the dining table doing something. Play a game, perhaps.

"Connie?"

Her dad pushed his chair back and got up, his expression growing concerned as Connie failed to respond. He made a noise of surprise when he noticed the bandage covering her cheek. "Are you okay?" he asked, pushing open the screen door for his daughter. "What happened?"

Doctor Kurunthottical was already rising to her feet to assist.

Just then there was a shuddering sound and Connie blinked in confusion at the room suddenly growing brighter. Oh. The power was back on. That noise was the air conditioner kicking in.

People said stuff but Connie just shook her head. "Hey dad?” she asked and the adults went quiet. “Do you mind if I stay here tonight?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just couldn't quite get this all written, polished, and prepped in time to go up Wednesday. Still, this didn't feel like enough to be worth a full week's wait, so I'm doing what I've done for the occasional epilogue in the past and posting the episode's conclusion on Friday instead.
> 
> And so we come to the end of _Be Wherever You Aren't_. I don't think Connie had a particularly restful vacation, unfortunately. Hopefully she'll have an easier time of it after our 'off' week when we come back on Wednesday, October 17th to **Episode 28: Crossroads to Empire.**
>
>> Connie needs a new cell phone and Priyanka is driving her out to the mall in Crossroads to get her one. On top of all that, Connie and Steven hatch a scheme to go and attend a Sour Cream performance. Hopefully she can wrap up the doctor visit in time to catch some sick beats that night in Empire City.
> 
> * * *
> 
> If you have a Connie Swap story burning in your soul that you want to see in our official, curated Omake collection, drop us a comment either in the Omake fic or here in the main fic and we'll get in touch.
> 
> Connie Swap has an official Discord for the fans. [Come check it out.](https://discord.gg/RQMDdhr)
> 
> As usual, we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments and your asks at the [Connie Swap Tumblr](http://connieswap.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Keeping track of all the updates to Connie Swap can get a little difficult, can't it? It doesn't have to be! If you go to the [Connie Swap Series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/630527) page and click the " **Subscribe** " button then you will receive an email alert every time a new episode is posted or a new chapter is added to _ANY_ fic in Connie Swap.
> 
> One button. All the updates.


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